PLAYS ,  ACTING 
ANDMUSIC 


AR1  HUR:  SYMONS 


r«fci 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


PLAYS,  ACTING,  AND  MUSIC 


PLAYS 
ACTING  AND   MUSIC 

A  BOOK  OF  THEORY 

BY 

ARTHUR  SYMONS 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


NEW    YORK 

E.    P.    BUTTON    &   COMPANY 
1909 


BEHEKAL 


COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY 
ARCHIBALD  CONSTABLE  &  COMPANY,  LTD. 


To  Maurice  Maeterlinck  in  friendship  and 
admiration 


194248 


PREFACE 

When  this  book  was  first  published  it  con- 
tained a  large  amount  of  material  which  is 
now  taken  out  of  it;  additions  have  been 
made,  besides  many  corrections  and  changes ; 
and  the  whole  form  of  the  book  has  been 
remodelled.  It  is  now  more  what  it  ought  to 
have  been  from  the  first;  what  I  saw,  from 
the  moment  of  its  publication,  that  it  ought 
to  have  been:  a  book  of  theory.  The  rather 
formal  announcement  of  my  intentions 
which  I  made  in  my  preface  is  reprinted 
here,  because,  at  all  events,  the  programme 
was  carried  out. 

This  book,  I  said  then,  is  intended  to  form 
part  of  a  series,  on  which  I  have  been  en- 
gaged for  many  years.  I  am  gradually 
working  my  way  towards  the  concrete  ex- 
pression of  a  theory,  or  system  of  aesthetics, 
of  all  the  arts. 

In  my  book  on  "The  Symbolist  Move- 
vii 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ment  in  Literature  "  I  made  a  first  attempt 
to  deal  in  this  way  with  literature;  other  vol- 
umes, now  in  preparation,  are  to  follow.  The 
present  volume  deals  mainly  with  the  stage, 
and,  secondarily,  with  music;  it  is  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  a  volume  called  "Studies  in 
Seven  Arts,"  in  which  music  will  be  dealt 
with  in  greater  detail,  side  by  side  with  paint- 
ing, sculpture,  architecture,  handicraft, 
dancing,  and  the  various  arts  of  the  stage. 
And,  as  life  too  is  a  form  of  art,  and  the 
visible  world  the  chief  storehouse  of  beauty, 
I  try  to  indulge  my  curiosity  by  the  study 
of  places  and  of  people.  A  book  on 
"  Cities  "  is  now  in  the  press,  and  a  book  of 
"imaginary  portraits"  is  to  follow,  under 
the  title  of  "Spiritual  Adventures."  Side 
by  side  with  these  studies  in  the  arts  I  have 
my  own  art,  that  of  verse,  which  is,  after  all, 
my  chief  concern. 

In  all  my  critical  and  theoretical  writing 
I  wish  to  be  as  little  abstract  as  possible, 
and  to  study  first  principles,  not  so  much 
as  they  exist  in  the  brain  of  the  theorist, 
but  as  they  may  be  discovered,  alive  and  in 
viii 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

effective  action,  in  every  achieved  form  of 
art.  I  do  not  understand  the  limitation  by 
which  so  many  writers  on  aesthetics  choose 
to  confine  themselves  to  the  study  of  artis- 
tic principles  as  they  are  seen  in  this  or  that 
separate  form  of  art.  Each  art  has  its  own 
laws,  its  own  capacities,  its  own  limits ;  these 
it  is  the  business  of  the  critic  jealously  to 
distinguish.  Yet  in  the  study  of  art  as  art, 
it  should  be  his  endeavour  to  master  tftie 
universal  science  of  beauty. 

1903,  1907. 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 


PAGE 


An  Apology  for  Puppets     .     ,.     ,.  3 

PLAYS  AND  ACTING 

Nietzsche  on  Tragedy       .     •,.      .      .  11 

Sarah  Bernhardt     .      .      .            .      .  17 

Coquelin  and  Moliere 29 

Rejane 37 

Yvette  Guilbert 42 

Sir  Henry  Irving         52 

Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts     ...  60 

Annotations       . 77 

M.  Capus  in  England     .  93 

A  Double  Enigma 100 

DRAMA 

Professional  and  Unprofessional      .  109 

Tolstoi  and  Others 115 

Some  Problem  Plays 124 


XI 


Contents 

PAGE 

"  Monna  Vanna "    ......  137 

The  Question  of  Censorship     .      .      .  143 

A  Play  and  the  Public     ....  148 

The  Test  of  the  Actor     ....  152 

The  Price  of   Realism     .,.-..  162 

On  Crossing  Stage  to  Right  .      .      .  167 

The  Speaking  of  Verse     ....  173 

Great  Acting  in  English  ....  182 

A  Theory  of  the  Stage    ...    ,      .      ,  198 

The  Sicilian  Actors     .      . ,    „      .     .  213 

MUSIC 

On  Writing  about  Music  ....  229 

Technique   and  the   Artist     ...  232 

Pachmann  and  the  Piano  ....  237 

Paderewski 258 

A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert  268 

The  Dramatisation  of  Song    .      .      .  277 

The  Meiningen  Orchestra       .      .      .  284 

Mozart  in  the  Mirabell-Garten     .      .  290 

Notes  on  Wagner  at  Bayreuth     .      .  297! 

Conclusion:  A  Paradox  on  Art     .      .  315 

xii 


INTRODUCTION 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


AN   APOLOGY   FOR   PUPPETS 

AFTER  seeing  a  ballet,  a  farce,  and  the  frag- 
ment of  an  opera  performed  by  the  mario- 
nettes at  the  Costanzi  Theatre  in  Rome,  I 
am  inclined  to  ask  myself  why  we  require 
the  intervention  of  any  less  perfect  medium 
between  the  meaning  of  a  piece,  as  the  au- 
thor conceived  it,  and  that  other  meaning 
which  it  derives  from  our  reception  of  it. 
The  living  actor,  even  when  he  condescends 
to  subordinate  himself  to  the  requirements 
of  pantomime,  has  always  what  he  is  proud 
to  call  his  temperament;  in  other  words,  so 
much  personal  caprice,  which  for  the  most 
part  means  wilful  misunderstanding;  and 
in  seeing  his  acting  you  have  to  consider 
this  intrusive  little  personality  of  his  as  well 
as  the  author's.  The  marionette  may  be 
relied  upon.  He  will  respond  to  an  indica- 
tion without  reserve  or  revolt;  an  error  on 

s 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

his  part  (we  are  all  human)  will  certainly 
be  the  fault  of  the  author;  he  can  be  trained 
to  perfection.  As  he  is  painted,  so  will  he 
smile;  as  the  wires  lift  or  lower  his  hands, 
so  will  his  gestures  be;  and  he  will  dance 
when  his  legs  are  set  in  motion. 

Seen  at  a  distance,  the  puppets  cease  to  be 
an  amusing  piece  of  mechanism,  imitating 
real  people ;  there  is  no  difference.  I  protest 
that  the  Knight  who  came  in  with  his  plumed 
hat,  his  shining  sword,  and  flung  back  his 
long  cloak  with  so  fine  a  sweep  of  the  arm, 
was  exactly  the  same  to  me  as  if  he  had  been 
a  living  actor,  dressed  in  the  same  clothes, 
and  imitating  the  gesture  of  a  knight;  and 
that  the  contrast  of  what  was  real,  as  we 
say,  under  the  fiction  appears  to  me  less 
ironical  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter. 
We  have  to  allow,  you  will  admit,  at  least 
as  much  to  the  beneficent  heightening  of 
travesty,  if  we  have  ever  seen  the  living  actor 
in  the  morning,  not  yet  shaved,  standing  at 
the  bar,  his  hat  on  one  side,  his  mouth 
spreading  in  that  abandonment  to  laughter 
which  has  become  from  the  necessity  of  his 


An  Apology   for   Puppets 

profession,  a  natural  trick;  oh,  much  more, 
I  think,  than  if  we  merely  come  upon  an 
always  decorative,  never  an  obtrusive,  cos- 
tumed figure,  leaning  against  the  wall,  non- 
chalantly enough,  in  a  corner  of  the  coulisses. 
To  sharpen  our  sense  of  what  is  illusive 
in  the  illusion  of  the  puppets,  let  us  sit  not 
too  far  from  the  stage.  Choosing  our  place 
carefully,  we  shall  have  the  satisfaction  of 
always  seeing  the  wires  at  their  work,  while 
I  think  we  shall  lose  nothing  of  what  is  most 
savoury  in  the  feast  of  the  illusion.  There 
is  not  indeed  the  appeal  to  the  senses  of  the 
first  row  of  the  stalls  at  a  ballet  of  living 
dancers.  But  is  not  that  a  trifle  too  obvi- 
ous sentiment  for  the  true  artist  in  artifi- 
cial things?  Why  leave  the  ball-room?  It 
is  not  nature  that  one  looks  for  on  the  stage 
in  this  kind  of  spectacle,  and  our  excitement 
in  watching  it  should  remain  purely  intel- 
lectual. If  you  prefer  that  other  kind  of 
illusion,  go  a  little  further  away,  and,  I  as- 
sure you,  you  will  find  it  quite  easy  to  fall 
in  love  with  a  marionette.  I  have  seen  the 
most  adorable  heads,  with  real  hair  too, 

5 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

among  the  wooden  dancers  of  a  theatre  of 
puppets;  faces  which  might  easily,  with  but 
a  little  of  that  good-will  which  goes  to  all 
falling  in  love,  seem  the  answer  to  a  particu- 
lar dream,  making  all  other  faces  in  the 
world  but  spoilt  copies  of  this  inspired  piece 
of  painted  wood. 

But  the  illusion,  to  a  more  scrupulous 
taste,  will  consist  simply  in  that  complication 
of  view  which  allows  us  to  see  wood  and 
wire  imitating  an  imitation,  and  which  de- 
lights us  less  when  seen  at  what  is  called  the 
proper  distance,  where  the  two  are  indistin- 
guishable, than  when  seen  from  just  the 
point  where  all  that  is  crudely  mechanical 
hides  the  comedy  of  what  is,  absolutely,  a 
deception.  Losing,  as  we  do,  something  of 
the  particularity  of  these  painted  faces,  we 
are  able  to  enjoy  all  the  better  what  it  is 
certainly  important  we  should  appreciate, 
if  we  are  truly  to  appreciate  our  puppets. 
This  is  nothing  less  than  a  fantastic,  yet  a 
direct,  return  to  the  masks  of  the  Greeks: 
that  learned  artifice  by  which  tragedy  and 
comedy  were  assisted  in  speaking  to  the 

6 


An  Apology   for  Puppets 

world  with  the  universal  voice,  by  this  delib- 
erate generalising  of  emotion.  It  will  be  a 
lesson  to  some  of  our  modern  notions;  and 
it  may  be  instructive  for  us  to  consider  that 
we  could  not  give  a  play  of  Ibsen's  to  mari- 
onettes, but  that  we  could  give  them  the 
"Agamemnon." 

Above  all,  for  we  need  it  above  all,  let 
the  marionettes  remind  us  that  the  art  of  the 
theatre  should  be  beautiful  first,  and  then 
indeed  what  you  will  afterwards.  Gesture 
on  the  stage  is  the  equivalent  of  rhythm  in 
verse,  and  it  can  convey,  as  a  perfect  rhythm 
should,  not  a  little  of  the  inner  meaning  of 
words,  a  meaning  perhaps  more  latent  in 
things.  Does  not  gesture  indeed  make  emo- 
tion, more  certainly  and  more  immediately 
than  emotion  makes  gesture?  You  may  feel 
that  you  may  suppress  emotion;  but  assume 
a  smile,  lifted  eyebrows,  a  clenched  fist,  and 
it  is  impossible  for  you  not  to  assume  along 
with  the  gesture,  if  but  for  a  moment,  the 
emotion  to  which  that  gesture  corresponds. 
In  our  marionettes,  then,  we  get  personi- 
fied gesture,  and  the  gesture,  like  all  other 

7 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

forms  of  emotion,  generalised.  The  appeal 
in  what  seems  to  you  these  childish  manoeu- 
vres is  to  a  finer,  because  to  a  more  inti- 
mately poetic,  sense  of  things  than  the 
merely  rationalistic  appeal  of  very  modern 
plays.  If  at  times  we  laugh,  it  is  with  won- 
der at  seeing  humanity  so  gay,  heroic,  and 
untiring.  There  is  the  romantic  suggestion 
of  magic  in  this  beauty. 

Maeterlinck  wrote  on  the  title-page  of  one 
of  his  volumes  "Drames  pour  mario- 
nettes," no  doubt  to  intimate  his  sense  of  the 
symbolic  value,  in  the  interpretation  of  a 
profound  inner  meaning  of  that  external 
nullity  which  the  marionette  by  its  very  na- 
ture emphasises.  And  so  I  find  my  puppets, 
where  the  extremes  meet,  ready  to  interpret 
not  only  the  "  Agamemnon,"  but  "  La  Mort 
de  Tintagiles";  for  the  soul,  which  is  to 
make,  we  may  suppose,  the  drama  of  the 
future,  is  content  with  as  simple  a  mouth- 
piece as  Fate  and  the  great  passions,  which 
were  the  classic  drama. 


PLAYS    AND   ACTING 


NIETZSCHE   ON   TRAGEDY 

I  HAVE  been  reading  Nietzsche  on  the 
Origin  of  Tragedy  with  the  delight  of 
one  who  discovers  a  new  world,  which 
he  has  seen  already  in  a  dream.  I  never 
take  up  Nietzsche  without  the  surprise 
of  finding  something  familiar.  Some- 
times it  is  the  answer  to  a  question  which 
I  have  only  asked;  sometimes  it  seems  to 
me  that  I  have  guessed  at  the  answer.  And, 
in  his  restless  energy,  his  hallucinatory 
vision,  the  agility  of  this  climbing  mind  of 
the  mountains,  I  find  that  invigoration  which 
only  a  "tragic  philosopher"  can  give.  "A 
sort  of  mystic  soul,"  as  he  says  of  himself, 
"  almost  the  soul  of  a  Maenad,  who,  troubled, 
capricious,  and  half  irresolute  whether  to 
cede  or  fly,  stammers  out  something  in  a 
foreign  tongue." 

The  book  is  a   study   in   the    origin   of 
tragedy  among  the  Greeks,  as  it  arose  out 

11 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

of  music  through  the  medium  of  the  chorus. 
We  are  apt  to  look  on  the  chorus  in  Greek 
plays  as  almost  a  negligible  part  of  the  struc- 
ture; as,  in  fact,  hardly  more  than  the  com- 
ments of  that  "ideal  spectator"  whom 
Schiegel  called  up  out  of  the  depths  of  the 
German  consciousness.  We  know,  however, 
that  the  chorus  was  the  original  nucleus  of 
the  play,  that  the  action  on  which  it  seems 
only  to  comment  is  no  more  than  a  develop- 
ment of  the  chorus.  Here  is  the  problem  to 
which  Nietzsche  endeavours  to  find  an  an- 
swer. He  finds  it,  unlike  the  learned  persons 
who  study  Greek  texts,  among  the  roots  of 
things,  in  the  very  making  of  the  universe. 
Art  arises,  he  tells  us,  from  the  conflict  of 
the  two  creative  spirits,  symbolised  by  the 
Greeks  in  the  two  gods,  Apollo  and  Diony- 
sus; and  he  names  the  one  the  Apollonian 
spirit,  which  we  see  in  plastic  art,  and  the 
other  the  Dionysiac  spirit,  which  we  see  in 
music.  Apollo  is  the  god  of  dreams,  Diony- 
sus the  god  of  intoxication;  the  one  repre- 
sents for  us  the  world  of  appearances,  the 
other  is,  as  it  were,  the  voice  of  things  in 

12 


Nietzsche  on  Tragedy 

themselves.  The  chorus,  then,  which  arose 
out  of  the  hymns  to  Dionysus,  is  the  "  lyric 
cry,"  the  vital  ecstasy;  the  drama  is  the  pro- 
jection into  vision,  into  a  picture,  of  the  ex- 
terior, temporary  world  of  forms.  "We 
now  see  that  the  stage  and  the  action  are 
conceived  only  as  vision:  that  the  sole 
/reality'  is  precisely  the  chorus,  which  itself 
produces  the  vision,  and  expresses  it  by  the 
aid  of  the  whole  symbolism  of  dance,  sound, 
and  word."  In  the  admirable  phrase  of 
Schiller,  the  chorus  is  "a  living  rampart 
against  reality,"  against  that  false  reality  of 
daily  life  which  is  a  mere  drapery  of  civilisa- 
tion, and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  primitive 
reality  of  nature.  The  realistic  drama  be- 
gins with  Euripides;  and  Euripides,  the 
casuist,  the  friend  of  Socrates  (whom 
Nietzsche  qualifies  as  the  true  decadent,  an 
"instrument  of  decomposition,"  the  slayer 
of  art,  the  father  of  modern  science) ,  brings 
tragedy  to  an  end,  as  he  substitutes  pathos 
for  action,  thought  for  contemplation,  and 
passionate  sentiments  for  the  primitive 
ecstasy.  "Armed  with  the  scourge  of  its 

13 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

syllogisms,  an  optimist  dialectic  drives  the 
music  out  of  tragedy :  that  is  to  say,  destroys 
the  very  essence  of  tragedy,  an  essence 
which  can  be  interpreted  only  as  a  mani- 
festation and  objectivation  of  Dionysiac 
states,  as  a  visible  symbol  of  music,  as  the 
dream-world  of  a  Dionysiac  intoxication." 
There  are  many  pages,  scattered  through- 
out his  work,  in  which  Pater  has  dealt  with 
some  of  the  Greek  problems  very  much  in 
the  spirit  of  Nietzsche;  with  that  problem, 
for  instance,  of  the  "blitheness  and  seren- 
ity "  of  the  Greek  spirit,  and  of  the  gulf  of 
horror  over  which  it  seems  to  rest,  suspended 
as  on  the  wings  of  the  condor.  That  myth 
of  Dionysus  Zagreus,  "  a  Bacchus  who  had 
been  in  hell,"  which  is  the  foundation  of  the 
marvellous  new  myth  of  "Denys  FAuxer- 
rois,"  seems  always  to  be  in  the  mind  of 
Nietzsche,  though  indeed  he  refers  to  it  but 
once,  and  passingly.  Pater  has  shown,  as 
Nietzsche  shows  in  greater  detail  and  with 
a  more  rigorous  logic,  that  this  "  serenity  " 
was  but  an  accepted  illusion,  and  all  Olym- 
pus itself  but  "intermediary,"  an  escape, 

14 


Nietzsche  on  Tragedy 

through  the  aesthetics  of  religion,  from  the 
trouble  at  the  heart  of  things;  art,  with  its 
tragic  illusions  of  life,  being  another  form 
of  escape.  To  Nietzsche  the  world  and  ex- 
istence justify  themselves  only  as  an  aes- 
thetic phenomenon,  the  work  of  a  god  wholly 
the  artist;  "and  in  this  sense  the  object  of 
the  tragic  myth  is  precisely  to  convince  us 
that  even  the  horrible  and  the  monstrous  are 
no  more  than  an  aesthetic  game  played  with 
itself  by  the  Will  in  the  eternal  plenitude  of 
its  joy."  "The  Will"  is  Schopenhauer's 
''  Will,"  the  vital  principle.  "  If  it  were  pos- 
sible," says  Nietzsche,  in  one  of  his  aston- 
ishing figures  of  speech,  "  to  imagine  a  dis- 
sonance becoming  a  human  being  (and  what 
is  man  but  that?),  in  order  to  endure  life, 
this  dissonance  would  need  some  admirable 
illusion  to  hide  from  itself  its  true  nature, 
under  a  veil  of  beauty."  This  is  the  aim  of 
art,  as  it  calls  up  pictures  of  the  visible  world 
and  of  the  little  temporary  actions  of  men 
on  its  surface.  The  hoofed  satyr  of  Diony- 
sus, as  he  leaps  into  the  midst  of  these  gra- 
cious appearances,  drunk  with  the  young 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

wine  of  nature,  surly  with  the  old  wisdom 
of  Silenus,  brings  the  real,  excessive,  dis- 
turbing truth  of  things  suddenly  into  the  il- 
lusion ;  and  is  gone  again,  with  a  shrill  laugh, 
without  forcing  on  us  more  of  his  presence 
than  we  can  bear. 

I  have  but  touched  on  a  few  points  in  an 
argument  which  has  itself  the  ecstatic  qual- 
ity of  which  it  speaks.  A  good  deal  of  the 
book  is  concerned  with  the  latest  develop- 
ment of  music,  and  especially  with  Wagner. 
Nietzsche,  after  his  change  of  sides,  tells 
us  not  to  take  this  part  too  seriously:  "what 
I  fancied  I  heard  in  the  Wagnerian  music 
has  nothing  to  do  with  Wagner."  Few 
better  things  have  been  said  about  music 
than  these  pages;  some  of  them  might  be 
quoted  against  the  "programme"  music 
which  has  been  written  since  that  time,  and 
against  the  false  theory  on  which  musicians 
have  attempted  to  harness  music  in  the 
shafts  of  literature.  The  whole  book  is 
awakening;  in  Nietzsche's  own  words,  "a 
prodigious  hope  speaks  in  it." 


16 


SARAH    BERNHARDT 

I  AM  not  sure  that  the  best  moment  to  study 
an  artist  is  not  the  moment  of  what  is  called 
decadence.  The  first  energy  of  inspiration 
is  gone;  what  remains  is  the  method,  the 
mechanism,  and  it  is  that  which  alone  one 
can  study,  as  one  can  study  the  mechanism 
of  the  body,  not  the  principle  of  life  itself. 
What  is  done  mechanically,  after  the  heat 
of  the  blood  has  cooled,  and  the  divine  ac- 
cidents have  ceased  to  happen,  is  precisely 
all  that  was  consciously  skilful  in  the  per- 
formance of  an  art.  To  see  al}  this  mechan- 
ism left  bare,  as  the  form  of  the  skeleton  is 
left  bare  when  age  thins  the  flesh  upon  it, 
is  to  learn  more  easily  all  that  is  to  be  learnt 
of  structure,  the  art  which  not  art  but  nature 
has  hitherto  concealed  with  its  merciful 
covering. 

The  art  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  has  always 
been  a  very  conscious  art,  but  it  spoke  to 

17 


Plays,,  Acting,  and  Music 

us,  once,  with  so  electrical  a  shock,  as  if 
nerve  touched  nerve,  or  the  mere  "  contour 
subtil "  of  the  voice  were  laid  tinglingly  on 
one's  spinal  cord,  that  it  was  difficult  to  ana- 
lyse it  coldly.  She  was  Phedre  or  Mar- 
guerite Gautier,  she  was  Adrienne  Lecou- 
vreur,  Fedora,  La  Tosca,  the  actual  woman, 
and  she  was  also  that  other  actual  woman, 
Sarah  Bernhardt.  Two  magics  met  and 
united,  in  the  artist  and  the  woman,  each 
alone  of  its  kind.  There  was  an  excitement 
in  going  to  the  theatre;  one's  pulses  beat 
feverishly  before  the  curtain  had  risen ;  there 
was  almost  a  kind  of  obscure  sensation  of 
peril,  such  as  one  feels  when  the  lioness  leaps 
into  the  cage,  on  the  other  side  of  the  bars. 
And  the  acting  was  like  a  passionate  declara- 
tion, offered  to  some  one  unknown ;  it  was  as 
if  the  whole  nervous  force  of  the  audience 
were  sucked  out  of  it  and  flung  back,  in- 
tensified, upon  itself,  as  it  encountered  the 
single,  insatiable,  indomitable  nervous  force 
of  the  woman.  And  so,  in  its  way,  this  very 
artificial  acting  seemed  the  mere  instinctive, 
irresistible  expression  of  a  temperament;  it 
18 


Sarah  Bernhardt 

mesmerised  one,  awakening  the  senses  and 
sending  the  intelligence  to  sleep. 

After  all,  though  Re  jane  skins  emotions 
alive,  and  Duse  serves  them  up  to  you  on 
golden  dishes,  it  is  Sarah  Bernhardt  who 
prepares  the  supreme  feast.  In  "  La  Dame 
aux  Camelias,"  still,  she  shows  herself,  as 
an  actress,  the  greatest  actress  in  the  world. 
It  is  all  sheer  acting;  there  is  no  suggestion, 
as  with  Duse,  there  is  no  canaille  attractive- 
ness, as  with  Re  jane;  the  thing  is  plastic,  a 
modelling  of  emotion  before  you,  with  every 
vein  visible;  she  leaves  nothing  to  the  imagi- 
nation, gives  you  every  motion,  all  the  physi- 
cal signs  of  death,  all  the  fierce  abandonment 
to  every  mood,  to  grief,  to  delight,  to  lassi- 
tude. When  she  suffers,  in  the  scene,  for 
instance,  where  Armand  insults  her,  she  is 
like  a  trapped  wild  beast  which  some  one  is 
torturing,  and  she  wakes  just  that  harrowing 
pity.  One's  whole  flesh  suffers  with  her 
flesh;  her  voice  caresses  and  excites  like  a 
touch;  it  has  a  throbbing,  monotonous  music, 
which  breaks  deliciously,  which  pauses  sus- 
pended, and  then  resolves  itself  in  a  perfect 

19 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

chord.  Her  voice  is  like  a  thing  detachable 
from  herself,  a  thing  which  she  takes  in  her 
hands  like  a  musical  instrument,  playing  on 
the  stops  cunningly  with  her  fingers.  Prose, 
when  she  speaks  it,  becomes  a  kind  of  verse, 
with  all  the  rhythms,  the  vocal  harmonies, 
of  a  kind  of  human  poetry.  Her  whisper  is 
heard  across  the  whole  theatre,  every  syllable 
distinct,  and  yet  it  is  really  a  whisper.  She 
comes  on  the  stage  like  a  miraculous  painted 
idol,  all  nerves ;  she  runs  through  the  gamut 
of  the  sex,  and  ends  a  child,  when  the  ap- 
proach of  death  brings  Marguerite  back  to 
that  deep  infantile  part  of  woman.  She  plays 
the  part  now  with  the  accustomed  ease  of 
one  who  puts  on  and  off  an  old  shoe.  It  is 
almost  a  part  of  her;  she  knows  it  through 
all  her  senses.  And  she  moved  me  as  much 
last  night  as  she  moved  me  when  I  first  saw 
her  play  the  part  eleven  or  twelve  years  ago. 
To  me,  sitting  where  I  was  not  too  near  the 
stage,  she  might  have  been  five-and-twenty. 
I  saw  none  of  the  mechanism  of  the  art,  as 
I  saw  it  in  "L'Aiglon";  here  art  still  con- 
cealed art.  Her  vitality  was  equal  to  the 
20 


Sarah  Bcrnhardt 

vitality  of  Re  jane;  it  is  differently  ex- 
pressed, that  is  all.  With  Re  jane  the  vital- 
ity is  direct;  it  is  the  appeal  of  Gavroche, 
the  sharp,  impudent  urchin  of  the  streets; 
Sarah  Bernhardt's  vitality  is  electrical,  and 
shoots  its  currents  through  all  manner  of 
winding  ways.  In  form  it  belongs  to  an 
earlier  period,  just  as  the  writing  of  Dumas 
fils  belongs  to  an  earlier  period  than  the 
writing  of  Meilhac.  It  comes  to  us  with 
the  tradition  to  which  it  has  given  life;  it 
does  not  spring  into  our  midst,  unruly  as 
nature. 

But  it  is  in  "Phedre"  that  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt  must  be  seen,  if  we  are  to  realise  all 
that  her  art  is  capable  of.  In  writing 
"Phedre,"  Racine  anticipated  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt.  If  the  part  had  been  made  for  her 
by  a  poet  of  our  own  days,  it  could  not  have 
been  brought  more  perfectly  within  her 
limits,  nor  could  it  have  more  perfectly 
filled  those  limits  to  their  utmost  edge.  It 
is  one  of  the  greatest  parts  in  poetical  drama, 
and  it  is  written  with  a  sense  of  the  stage 
not  less  sure  than  its  sense  of  dramatic 
21 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

poetry.  There  was  a  time  when  Racine  was 
looked  upon  as  old-fashioned,  as  conven- 
tional, as  frigid.  It  is  realised  nowadays 
that  his  verse  has  cadences  like  the  cadences 
of  Verlaine,  that  his  language  is  as  simple 
and  direct  as  prose,  and  that  he  is  one  of  the 
most  passionate  of  poets.  Of  the  character 
of  Phedre  Racine  tells  us  that  it  is  "  ce  que 
j'ai  peut-etre  mis  de  plus  raisonnable  sur 
le  theatre."  The  word  strikes  oddly  on  our 
ears,  but  every  stage  of  the  passion  of  Phe- 
dre is  indeed  reasonable,  logical,  as  only  a 
French  poet,  since  the  Greeks  themselves, 
could  make  it.  The  passion  itself  is  an  ab- 
normal, an  insane  thing,  and  that  passion 
comes  to  us  with  all  its  force  and  all  its 
perversity;  but  the  words  in  which  it  is  ex- 
pressed are  never  extravagant,  they  are  al- 
ways clear,  simple,  temperate,  perfectly 
precise  and  explicit.  The  art  is  an  art  ex- 
quisitely balanced  between  the  conventional 
and  the  realistic,  and  "the  art  of  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt,  when  she  plays  the  part,  is  balanced 
with  just  the  same  unerring  skill.  She 
seems  to  abandon  herself  wholly,  at  times,  to 

22 


Sarah  Bernhardt 

her  "  fureurs  " ;  she  tears  the  words  with  her 
teeth,  and  spits  them  out  of  her  mouth,  like 
a  wild  beast  ravening  upon  prey;  but  there 
is  always  dignity,  restraint,  a  certain  remote- 
ness of  soul,  and  there  is  always  the  verse, 
and  her  miraculous  rendering  of  the  verse, 
to  keep  Racine  in  the  right  atmosphere.  Of 
what  we  call  acting  there  is  little,  little 
change  in  the  expression  of  the  face.  The 
part  is  a  part  for  the  voice,  and  it  is  only 
in  "Phedre"  that  one  can  hear  that  orches- 
tra, her  voice,  in  all  its  variety  of  beauty. 
In  her  modern  plays,  plays  in  prose,  she  is 
condemned  to  use  only  a  few  of  the  instru- 
ments of  the  orchestra:  an  actress  must,  in 
such  parts,  be  conversational,  and  for  how 
much  beauty  or  variety  is  there  room  in 
modern  conversation?  But  here  she  has  Ra- 
cine's verse,  along  with  Racine's  psychology, 
and  the  language  has  nothing  more  to  offer 
the  voice  of  a  tragic  actress.  She  seems  to 
speak  her  words,  her  lines,  with  a  kind  of 
joyful  satisfaction;  all  the  artist  in  her  de- 
lights in  the  task.  Her  nerves  are  in  it, 
as  well  as  her  intelligence ;  but  everything  is 

23 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

coloured  by  the  poetry,  everything  is  sub- 
ordinate to  beauty. 

Well,  and  she  seems  still  to  be  the  same 
Phedre  that  she  was  eleven  or  twelve  years 
ago,  as  she  is  the  same  "Dame  aux  Came- 
lias."  Is  it  reality,  is  it  illusion?  Illusion, 
perhaps,  but  an  illusion  which  makes  itself 
into  a  very  effectual  kind  of  reality.  She  has 
played  these  pieces  until  she  has  got  them, 
not  only  by  heart,  but  by  every  nerve  and 
by  every  vein,  and  now  the  ghost  of  the  real 
thing  is  so  like  the  real  thing  that  there  is 
hardly  any  telling  the  one  from  the  other. 
It  is  the  living  on  of  a  mastery  once  abso- 
lutely achieved,  without  so  much  as  the  need 
of  a  new  effort.  The  test  of  the  artist,  the 
test  which  decides  how  far  the  artist  is  still 
living,  as  more  than  a  force  of  memory,  lies 
in  the  power  to  create  a  new  part,  to  bring 
new  material  to  life.  Last  year,  in  "  L'Aig- 
lon,"  it  seemed  to  me  that  Sarah  Bernhardt 
showed  how  little  she  still  possessed  that 
power,  and  this  year  I  see  the  same  failure 
in  "  Francesca  da  Rimini." 

The  play,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  hope- 

24 


Sarah  Bernhardt 

lessly  poor,  common,  melodramatic,  without 
atmosphere,  without  nobility,  subtlety,  or 
passion ;  it  degrades  the  story  which  we  owe 
to  Dante  and  not  to  history  (for,  in  itself, 
the  story  is  a  quite  ordinary  story  of  adul- 
tery :  Dante  and  the  flames  of  his  hell  purged 
it) ,  it  degrades  it  almost  out  of  all  rec- 
ognition. These  middle-aged  people,  who 
wrangle  shrewishly  behind  the  just  turned 
back  of  the  husband  and  almost  in  the  hear- 
ing of  the  child,  are  people  in  whom  it  is 
impossible  to  be  interested,  apart  from  any 
fine  meanings  put  into  them  in  the  acting. 
And  yet,  since  M.  de  Max  has  made  hardly 
less  than  a  creation  out  of  the  part  of  Gio- 
vanni, filling  it,  as  he  has,  with  his  own  nerv- 
ous force  and  passionately  restrained  art, 
might  it  not  have  been  possible  once  for 
Sarah  Bernhardt  to  have  thrilled  us  even 
as  this  Francesca  of  Mr.  Marion  Crawford? 
I  think  so;  she  has  taken  bad  plays  as  will- 
ingly as  good  plays,  to  turn  them  to  her  own 
purpose,  and  she  has  been  as  triumphant,  if 
not  as  fine,  in  bad  plays  as  in  good  ones. 
Now  her  Francesca  is  lifeless,  a  melodious 

25 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

image,  making  meaningless  music.  She  says 
over  the  words,  cooingly,  chantingly,  or 
frantically,  as  the  expression  marks,  to 
which  she  seems  to  act,  demand.  The  inter- 
est is  in  following  her  expression -marks. 

The  first  thing  one  notices  in  her  acting, 
when  one  is  free  to  watch  it  coolly,  is  the  way 
in  which  she  subordinates  effects  to  effect. 
She  has  her  crescendos,  of  course,  and  it  is 
these  which  people  are  most  apt  to  remem- 
ber, but  the  extraordinary  force  of  these 
crescendos  comes  from  the  smooth  and  level 
manner  in  which  the  main  part  of  the  speak- 
ing is  done.  She  is  not  anxious  to  make 
points  at  every  moment,  to  put  all  the  pos- 
sible emphasis  into  every  separate  phrase; 
I  have  heard  her  glide  over  really  significant 
phrases  which,  taken  by  themselves,  would 
seem  to  deserve  more  consideration,  but 
which  she  has  wisely  subordinated  to  an  over- 
powering effect  of  ensemble.  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt's  acting  always  reminds  me  of  a  mu- 
sical performance.  Her  voice  is  itself  an 
instrument  of  music,  and  she  plays  upon  it 
as  a  conductor  plays  upon  an  orchestra. 
26 


Sarah  Bcrnhardt 

One  seems  to  see  the  expression  marks: 
piano,  pianissimo,  largamente,  and  just 
where  the  tempo  rubato  comes  in.  She 
never  forgets  that  art  is  not  nature,  and 
that  when  one  is  speaking  verse  one  is  not 
talking  prose.  She  speaks  with  a  liquid 
articulation  of  every  syllable,  like  one  who 
loves  the  savour  of  words  on  the  tongue, 
giving  them  a  beauty  and  an  expressive- 
ness often  not  in  them  themselves.  Her 
face  changes  less  than  you  might  expect; 
it  is  not  over-possessed  by  detail,  it  gives 
always  the  synthesis.  The  smile  of  the 
artist,  a  wonderful  smile  which  has  never 
aged  with  her,  pierces  through  the  passion 
or  languor  of  the  part.  It  is  often  accom- 
panied by  a  suave,  voluptuous  tossing  of 
the  head,  and  is  like  the  smile  of  one  who 
inhales  some  delicious  perfume,  with  half- 
closed  eyes.  All  through  the  level  per- 
fection of  her  acting  there  are  little  sharp 
snaps  of  the  nerves;  and  these  are  but 
one  indication  of  that  perfect  mechanism 
which  her  art  really  is.  Her  finger  is  al- 
ways upon  the  spring;  it  touches  or  releases 

27 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

it,  and  the  effect  follows  instantaneously. 
The  movements  of  her  body,  her  gestures, 
the  expression  of  her  face,  are  all  harmoni- 
ous, are  all  parts  of  a  single  harmony.  It  is 
not  reality  which  she  aims  at  giving  us,  it  is 
reality  transposed  into  another  atmosphere, 
as  if  seen  in  a  mirror,  in  which  all  its  out- 
lines become  more  gracious.  The  pleasure 
which  we  get  from  seeing  her  as  Francesca 
or  as  Marguerite  Gautier  is  doubled  by 
that  other  pleasure,  never  completely  out  of 
our  minds,  that  she  is  also  Sarah  Bernhardt. 
One  sometimes  forgets  that  Re  jane  is  acting 
at  all;  it  is  the  real  woman  of  the  part, 
Sapho,  or  Zaza,  or  Yanetta,  who  lives  before 
us.  Also  one  sometimes  forgets  that  Duse 
is  acting,  that  she  is  even  pretending  to  be 
Magda  or  Silvia;  it  is  Duse  herself  who  lives 
there,  on  the  stage.  But  Sarah  Bernhardt 
is  always  the  actress  as  well  as  the  part; 
when  she  is  at  her  best,  she  is  both  equally, 
and  our  consciousness  of  the  one  does  not 
disturb  our  possession  by  the  other.  When 
she  is  not  at  her  best,  we  see  only  the  actress, 
the  incomparable  craftswoman  openly  la- 
bouring at  her  work. 

28 


COQUELIN  AND  MOLIERE:  SOME 
ASPECTS 

To  see  Coquelin  in  Moliere  is  to  see  the 
greatest  of  comic  actors  at  his  best,  and  to 
realise  that  here  is  not  a  temperament,  or 
a  student,  or  anything  apart  from  the  art 
of  the  actor.  His  art  may  be  compared 
with  that  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  for  its  in- 
finite care  in  the  training  of  nature.  They 
have  an  equal  perfection,  but  it  may  be 
said  that  Coquelin,  with  his  ripe,  mellow 
art,  his  passion  of  humour,  his  touching 
vehemence,  makes  himself  seem  less  a  di- 
vine machine,  more  a  delightfully  faulty 
person.  His  voice  is  firm,  sonorous,  flex- 
ible, a  human,  expressive,  amusing  voice, 
not  the  elaborate  musical  instrument  of 
Sarah,  which  seems  to  go  by  itself,  caline, 
cooing,  lamenting,  raging,  or  in  that  won- 
derful swift  chatter  which  she  uses  with 
such  instant  and  deliberate  effect.  And, 
unlike  her,  his  face  is  the  face  of  his  part, 
always  a  disguise,  never  a  revelation. 
29 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

I  have  been  seeing  the  three  Coquelins 
and  their  company  at  the  Garrick  Thea- 
tre. They  did  "Tartuffe,"  "L'Avare," 
"Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,"  "Les  Pre- 
cieuses  Ridicules,"  and  a  condensed  version 
of  "Le  Depit  Amoureux,"  in  which  the 
four  acts  of  the  original  were  cut  down  into 
two.  Of  these  five  plays  only  two  are  in 
verse,  "  Tartuffe  "  and  "  Le  Depit  Amour- 
eux," and  I  could  not  help  wishing  that  the 
fashion  of  Moliere's  day  had  allowed  him  to 
write  all  his  plays  in  prose.  Moliere  was  not 
a  poet,  and  he  knew  that  he  was  not  a  poet. 
When  he  ventured  to  write  the  most  Shake- 
spearean of  his  comedies,  "L'Avare,"  in 
prose,  "  le  meme  prejuge,"  Voltaire  tells  us, 
"  qui  avait  fait  tomber  '  le  Festin  de  Pierre,' 
parcequ'il  etait  en  prose,  nuisit  au  succes  de 
TAvare.'  Cependant  le  public  qui,  a  la 
longue,  se  rend  tou jours  au  bon,  finit  par 
donner  a  cet  ouvrage  les  applaudissements 
qu'il  merite.  On  comprit  alors  qu'il  peut  y 
avoir  de  fort  bonnes  comedies  en  prose." 
How  infinitely  finer,  as  prose,  is  the  prose  of 
"L'Avare"  than  the  verse  of  "Tartuffe" 
so 


Coquelin  and  Moliere 

as  verse!  In  "  Tartuffe"  all  the  art  of  the 
actor  is  required  to  carry  you  over  the  arti- 
ficial jangle  of  the  alexandrines  without  al- 
lowing you  to  perceive  too  clearly  that  this 
man,  who  is  certainly  not  speaking  poetry, 
is  speaking  in  rhyme.  Moliere  was  a  great 
prose  writer,  but  I  do  not  remember  a  line 
of  poetry  in  the  whole  of  his  work  in  verse. 
The  temper  of  his  mind  was  the  temper 
of  mind  of  the  prose-writer.  His  wordly 
wisdom,  his  active  philosophy,  the  very 
mainspring  of  his  plots,  are  found,  char- 
acteristically, in  his  valets  and  his  servant- 
maids.  He  satirises  the  miser,  the  hypo- 
crite, the  bas-bleu,  but  he  chuckles  over  Fro- 
sine  and  Gros-Rene ;  he  loves  them  for  their 
freedom  of  speech  and  their  elastic  minds, 
ready  in  words  or  deeds.  They  are  his  cho- 
rus, if  the  chorus  might  be  imagined  as 
directing  the  action. 

But  Moliere  has  a  weakness,  too,  for  the 
bourgeois,  and  he  has  made  M.  Jourdain  im- 
mortally delightful.  There  is  not  a  really 
cruel  touch  in  the  whole  character;  we  laugh 
at  him  so  freely  because  Moliere  lets  us 

si 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

laugh  with  such  kindliness.  M.  Jourdain 
has  a  robust  joy  in  life;  he  carries  off  his  ab- 
surdities by  the  simple  good  faith  which  he 
puts  into  them.  When  I  speak  of  M.  Jour- 
dain I  hardly  know  whether  I  am  speaking 
of  the  character  of  Moliere  or  of  the  char- 
acter of  Coquelin.  Probably  there  is  no  dif- 
ference. We  get  Moliere's  vast,  succulent 
farce  of  the  intellect  rendered  with  an  art 
like  his  own.  If  this,  in  every  detail,  is  not 
what  Moliere  meant,  then  so  much  the  worse 
for  Moliere. 

Moliere  is  kind  to  his  bourgeois,  envelops 
him  softly  in  satire  as  in  cotton-wool,  dan- 
dles him  like  a  great  baby;  and  Coquelin  is 
without  bitterness,  stoops  to  make  stupidity 
heroic,  a  distinguished  stupidity.  A  study 
in  comedy  so  profound,  so  convincing,  so 
full  of  human  nature  and  of  the  art-con- 
cealing art  of  the  stage,  has  not  been  seen 
in  our  time.  As  Mascarille,  in  "Les  Pre- 
cieuses  Ridicules,"  Coquelin  becomes  deli- 
cate and  extravagant,  a  scented  whirlwind; 
his  parody  is  more  splendid  than  the  thing 
itself  which  he  parodies,  more  full  of  fine 

32 


Coquelin  and  Moliere 

show  and  nimble  bravery.  There  is  beauty 
in  this  broadly  comic  acting,  the  beauty  of 
subtle  detail.  Words  can  do  little  to  define 
a  performance  which  is  a  constant  series  of 
little  movements  of  the  face,  little  intona- 
tions of  the  voice,  a  way  of  lolling  in  the 
chair,  a  way  of  speaking,  of  singing,  of 
preserving  the  gravity  of  burlesque.  In 
:<  Tartuff e  "  we  get  a  form  of  comedy  which 
is  almost  tragic,  the  horribly  serious  comedy 
of  the  hypocrite.  Coquelin,  who  remakes  his 
face,  as  by  a  prolonged  effort  of  the  mus- 
cles, for  every  part,  makes,  for  this  part,  a 
great  fish's  face,  heavy,  suppressed,  with 
lowered  eyelids  and  a  secret  mouth,  out  of 
which  steals  at  times  some  stealthy  avowal. 
He  has  the  movements  of  a  great  slug,  or  of 
a  snail,  if  you  will,  putting  out  its  head  and 
drawing  it  back  into  its  shell.  The  face 
waits  and  plots,  with  a  sleepy  immobility, 
covering  a  hard,  indomitable  will.  It  is  like 
a  drawing  of  Daumier,  if  you  can  imagine 
a  drawing  which  renews  itself  at  every  in- 
stant, in  a  series  of  poses  to  which  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  add  words. 

33 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

I  am  told  that  Coquelin,  in  the  creation  of 
a  part,  makes  his  way  slowly,  surely,  in- 
wards, for  the  first  few  weeks  of  his  per- 
formance, and  that  then  the  thing  is  fin- 
ished, to  the  least  intonation  or  gesture,  and 
can  be  laid  down  and  taken  up  at  will,  with- 
out a  shade  of  difference  in  the  inter- 
pretation. The  part  of  Maitre  Jacques  in 
"  L'Avare,"  for  instance,  which  I  have  just 
seen  him  perform  with  such  gusto  and  such 
certainty,  had  not  been  acted  by  him  for 
twenty  years,  and  it  was  done,  without 
rehearsal,  in  the  midst  of  a  company  that  re- 
quired prompting  at  every  moment.  I  sup- 
pose this  method  of  moulding  a  part,  as  if 
in  wet  clay,  and  then  allowing  it  to  take 
hard,  final  form,  is  the  method  natural  to  the 
comedian,  his  right  method.  I  can  hardly 
think  that  the  tragic  actor  should  ever  allow 
himself  to  become  so  much  at  home  with  his 
material;  that  he  dare  ever  allow  his  clay  to 
become  quite  hard.  He  has  to  deal  with  the 
continually  shifting  stuff  of  the  soul  and  of 
the  passions,  with  nature  at  its  least  general- 
ised moments.  The  comic  actor  deals  with 

34 


Coquelin  and  Moliere 

nature  for  the  most  part  generalised,  with 
things  palpably  absurd,  with  characteristics 
that  strike  the  intelligence,  not  with  emo- 
tions that  touch  the  heart  or  the  senses.  He 
comes  to  more  definite  and  to  more  definable 
results,  on  which  he  may  rest,  confident  that 
what  has  made  an  audience  laugh  once  will 
make  it  laugh  always,  laughter  being  a 
physiological  thing,  wholly  independent  of 
mood. 

In  thinking  of  some  excellent  comic  actors 
of  our  own,  I  am  struck  by  the  much  greater 
effort  which  they  seem  to  make  in  order  to 
drive  their  points  home,  and  in  order  to  get 
what  they  think  variety.  Sir  Charles  Wynd- 
ham  is  the  only  English  actor  I  can  think  of 
at  the  moment  who  does  not  make  unneces- 
sary grimaces,  who  does  not  insist  on  acting 
when  the  difficult  thing  is  not  to  act.  In 
11  Tartuff e  "  Coquelin  stands  motionless  for 
five  minutes  at  a  time,  without  change  of 
expression,  and  yet  nothing  can  be  more  ex- 
pressive than  his  face  at  those  moments.  In 
Chopin's  G  Minor  Nocturne,  Op.  15,  there 
is  an  F  held  for  three  bars,  and  when  Rubin- 

33 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

stein  played  the  Nocturne,  says  Mr.  Hune- 
ker  in  his  instructive  and  delightful  book  on 
Chopin,  he  prolonged  the  tone,  "by  some 
miraculous  means,"  so  that  "it  swelled  and 
diminished,  and  went  singing  into  D,  as  if 
the  instrument  were  an  organ."  It  is  that 
power  of  sustaining  an  expression,  un- 
changed, and  yet  always  full  of  living  sig- 
nificance, that  I  find  in  Coquelin.  It  is  a  part 
of  his  economy,  the  economy  of  the  artist. 
The  improviser  disdains  economy,  as  much  as 
the  artist  cherishes  it.  Coquelin  has  some 
half-dozen  complete  variations  of  the  face  he 
has  composed  for  Tartuffe;  no  more  than 
that,  with  no  insignificances  of  expression 
thrown  away;  but  each  variation  is  a  new 
point  of  view,  from  which  we  see  the  whole 
character. 


REJANE 


THE  genius  of  Re  jane  is  a  kind  of  finesse: 
it  is  a  flavour,  and  all  the  ingredients  of  the 
dish  may  be  named  without  defining  it.  The 
thing  is  Parisian,  but  that  is  only  to  say  that 
it  unites  nervous  force  with  a  wicked  ease 
and  mastery  of  charm.  It  speaks  to  the 
senses  through  the  brain,  as  much  as  to  the 
brain  through  the  senses.  It  is  the  feminine 
equivalent  of  intellect.  It  "magnetises  our 
poor  vertebra?,"  in  Verlaine's  phrase,  be- 
cause it  is  sex  and  yet  not  instinct.  It  is  sex 
civilised,  under  direction,  playing  a  part,  as 
we  say  of  others  than  those  on  the  stage.  It 
calculates,  and  is  unerring.  It  has  none  of 
the  vulgar  warmth  of  mere  passion,  none  of 
its  health  or  simplicity.  It  leaves  a  little  red 
sting  where  it  has  kissed.  And  it  intoxicates 
us  by  its  appeal  to  so  many  sides  of  our  na- 
ture at  once.  We  are  thrilled,  and  we  ad- 
mire, and  are  almost  coldly  appreciative,  and 
yet  aglow  with  the  response  of  the  blood.  I 

37 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

have  found  myself  applauding  with  tears  in 
my  eyes.  The  feeling  and  the  critical  ap- 
proval came  together,  hand  in  hand :  neither 
counteracted  the  other:  and  I  had  to  think 
twice,  before  I  could  remember  how  elabor- 
ate a  science  went  to  the  making  of  that 
thrill  which  I  had  been  almost  cruelly 
enjoying. 

The  art  of  Re  jane  accepts  things  as  they 
are,  without  selection  or  correction;  unlike 
Duse,  who  chooses  just  those  ways  in  which 
she  shall  be  nature.  What  one  remembers 
are  little  homely  details,  in  which  the  shadow 
of  some  overpowering  impulse  gives  a 
sombre  beauty  to  what  is  common  or  ugly. 
She  renders  the  despair  of  the  woman  whose 
lover  is  leaving  her  by  a  single  movement, 
the  way  in  which  she  wipes  her  nose.  To 
her  there  is  but  one  beauty,  truth;  and  but 
one  charm,  energy.  Where  nature  has  not 
chosen,  she  will  not  choose;  she  is  content 
with  whatever  form  emotion  snatches  for 
itself  as  it  struggles  into  speech  out  of  an 
untrained  and  unconscious  body.  In 
"  Sapho  "  she  is  the  everyday  "  Venus  toute 

38 


Rejane 

entiere  a  sa  proie  attachee,"  and  she  has  all 
the  brutality  and  all  the  clinging  warmth  of 
the  flesh;  vice,  if  you  will,  but  serious  vice, 
vice  plus  passion.  Her  sordid,  gluttonous, 
instructed  eyes,  in  which  all  the  passions  and 
all  the  vices  have  found  a  nest,  speak  their 
own  language,  almost  without  the  need  of 
words,  throughout  the  play;  the  whole  face 
suffers,  exults,  lies,  despairs,  with  a  homely 
sincerity  which  cuts  more  sharply  than  any 
stage  emphasis.  She  seems  at  every  mo- 
ment to  throw  away  her  chances  of 
effect,  of  ordinary  stage-effect;  then,  when 
the  moment  seems  to  have  gone,  and  she  has 
done  nothing,  you  will  find  that  the  moment 
itself  has  penetrated  you,  that  she  has  done 
nothing  with  genius. 

Rejane  can  be  vulgar,  as  nature  is  vulgar: 
she  has  all  the  instincts  of  the  human  animal, 
of  the  animal  woman,  whom  man  will  never 
quite  civilise.  There  is  no  doubt  of  it,  nature 
lacks  taste ;  and  woman,  who  is  so  near  to  na- 
ture, lacks  taste  in  the  emotions.  Rejane,  in 
"Sapho"  or  in  "Zaza"  for  instance,  is 
woman  naked  and  shameless,  loving  and  suf - 

39 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

fering  with  all  her  nerves  and  muscles,  a 
gross,  pitiable,  horribly  human  thing,  whose 
direct  appeal,  like  that  of  a  sick  animal, 
seizes  you  by  the  throat  at  the  instant  in 
which  it  reaches  your  eyes  and  ears.  More 
than  any  actress  she  is  the  human  animal 
without  disguise  or  evasion;  with  all  the  in- 
stincts, all  the  natural  cries  and  movements. 
In  "  Sapho"  or  "Zaza"  she  speaks  the  lan- 
guage of  the  senses,  no  more ;  and  her  acting 
reminds  you  of  all  that  you  may  possibly 
have  forgotten  of  how  the  senses  speak  when 
they  speak  through  an  ignorant  woman  in 
love.  It  is  like  an  accusing  confirmation  of 
some  of  one's  guesses  at  truth,  before  the 
realities  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  affections  of 
the  flesh.  Scepticism  is  no  longer  possible: 
here,  in  "  Sapho,"  is  a  woman  who  flagel- 
lates herself  before  her  lover  as  the  penitent 
flagellates  himself  before  God.  In  the 
scene  where  her  lover  repulses  her  last  at- 
tempt to  win  him  back,  there  is  a  convulsive 
movement  of  the  body,  as  she  lets  herself 
sink  to  the  ground  at  his  feet,  which  is  like 
the  movement  of  one  who  is  going  to  be, 

40 


Itejane 

sick:  it  renders,  with  a  ghastly  truth  to 
nature,  the  abject  collapse  of  the  body  under 
overpowering  emotion.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
she  gives  you  merely  the  thing  itself,  with- 
out a  disturbing  atom  of  self -consciousness ; 
she  is  grotesque,  she  is  what  you  will:  it  is 
no  matter.  The  emotion  she  is  acting  pos- 
sesses her  like  a  blind  force;  she  is  Sapho, 
and  Sapho  could  only  move  and  speak  and 
think  in  one  way.  Where  Sarah  JSernhardt 
would  arrange  the  emotion  for  some  thrill- 
ing effect  of  art,  where  Duse  would  purge 
the  emotion  of  all  its  attributes  but  some 
fundamental  nobility,  Re  jane  takes  the  big, 
foolish,  dirty  thing  just  as  it  is.  And  is  not 
that,  perhaps,  the  supreme  merit  of  acting? 


41 


YVETTE    GUILBERT 


SHE  is  tall,  thin,  a  little  angular,  most  win- 
ningly  and  girlishly  awkward,  as  she  wan- 
ders on  to  the  stage  with  an  air  of  vague  dis- 
traction. Her  shoulders  droop,  her  arms 
hang  limply.  She  doubles  forward  in  an 
automatic  bow  in  response  to  the  thunders  of 
applause,  and  that  curious  smile  breaks  out 
along  her  lips  and  rises  and  dances  in  her 
bright  light-blue  eyes,  wide  open  in  a  sort  of 
child-like  astonishment.  Her  hair,  a  bright 
auburn,  rises  in  soft  masses  above  a  large, 
pure  forehead.  She  wears  a  trailing  dress, 
striped  yellow  and  pink,  without  ornament. 
Her  arms  are  covered  with  long  black  gloves. 
The  applause  stops  suddenly ;  there  is  a  hush 
of  suspense;  she  is  beginning  to  sing. 

And  with  the  first  note  you  realise  the  dif- 
ference between  Yvette  Guilbert  and  all  the 
rest  of  the  world.  A  sonnet  by  Mr.  Andre 
Raffalovich  states  just  that  difference  so 

42 


Yvette    Guilbert 

subtly  that  I  must  quote  it  to  help  out  my 
interpretation : 

If  you  want  hearty  laughter,  country  mirth — 

Or  frantic  gestures  of  an  acrobat, 
Heels  over  head — or  floating  lace  skirts  worth 

I  know  not  what,  a  large  eccentric  hat 
And  diamonds,  the  gift  of  some  dull  boy — 

Then  when  you  see  her  do  not  wrong  Yvette, 
Because  Yvette  is  not  a  clever  toy, 

A  tawdry  doll  in  fairy  limelight  set  ... 
And  should  her  song  sound  cynical  and  base 

At  first,  herself  ungainly,  or  her  smile 
Monotonous — wait,  listen,  watch  her  face: 

The  sufferings  of  those  the  world  calls  vile 
She  sings,  and  as  you  watch  Yvette  Guilbert, 
You  too  will  shiver,  seeing  their  despair. 

Now  to  me  Yvette  Guilbert  was  exquisite 
from  the  first  moment.  "Exquisite!"  I 
said  under  my  breath,  as  I  first  saw  her  come 
upon  the  stage.  But  it  is  not  merely  by  her 
personal  charm  that  she  thrills  you,  though 
that  is  strange,  perverse,  unaccountable. 

It  is  not  merely  that  she  can  do  pure  com- 
edy, that  she  can  be  frankly,  deliriously, 
gay.  There  is  one  of  her  songs  in  which 
she  laughs,  chuckles,  and  trills  a  rapid 

43 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

flurry  of  broken  words  and  phrases,  with  the 
sudden,  spontaneous,  irresponsible  mirth  of 
a  bird.  But  where  she  is  most  herself  is  in 
1  a  manner  of  tragic  comedy  which  has  never 
been  seen  on  the  music-hall  stage  from  the 
beginning.  It  is  the  profoundly  sad  and  es- 
sentially serious  comedy  which  one  sees  in 
Forain's  drawings,  those  rapid  outlines 
which,  with  the  turn  of  a  pencil,  give  you  the 
whole  existence  of  those  base  sections  of  so- 
ciety which  our  art  in  England  is  mainly 
forced  to  ignore.  People  call  the  art  of  Fo- 
rain  immoral,  they  call  Yvette  Guilbert's 
songs  immoral.  That  is  merely  the  conven- 
tional misuse  of  a  conventional  word.  The 
art  of  Yvette  Guilbert  is  certainly  the  art  of 
realism.  She  brings  before  you  the  real  life- 
drama  of  the  streets,  of  the  pot-house;  she 
shows  you  the  seamy  side  of  life  behind  the 
scenes ;  she  calls  things  by  their  right  names. 
But  there  is  not  a  touch  of  sensuality  about 
her,  she  is  neither  contaminated  nor  contam- 
inating by  what  she  sings;  she  is  simply  a 
great,  impersonal,  dramatic  artist,  who  sings 
realism  as  others  write  it. 


Yvette    Guilbert 

Her  gamut  in  the  purely  comic  is  wide; 
with  an  inflection  of  the  voice,  a  bend  of  that 
curious  long  thin  body  which  seems  to  be  em- 
bodied gesture,  she  can  suggest,  she  can  por- 
tray, the  humour  that  is  dry,  ironical,  coarse 
(I  will  admit),  unctuous  even.  Her  voice 
can  be  sweet  or  harsh;  it  can  chirp,  lilt, 
chuckle,  stutter;  it  can  moan  or  laugh,  be 
tipsy  or  distinguished.  Nowhere  is  she  con- 
ventional; nowhere  does  she  resemble  any 
other  French  singer.  Voice,  face,  ges- 
tures, pantomime,  all  are  different,  all  are 
purely  her  own.  She  is  a  creature  of  con- 
trasts, and  suggests  at  once  all  that  is  inno- 
cent and  all  that  is  perverse.  She  has  the 
pure  blue  eyes  of  a  child,  eyes  that  are  cloud- 
less, that  gleam  with  a  wicked  ingenuous- 
ness, that  close  in  the  utter  abasement  of 
weariness,  that  open  wide  in  all  the  expres- 
sionlessness  of  surprise.  Her  naivete  is  per- 
fect, and  perfect,  too,  is  that  strange,  subtle 
smile  of  comprehension  that  closes  the 
period.  A  great  impersonal  artist,  depend- 
ing as  she  does  entirely  on  her  expressive 
power,  her  dramatic  capabilities,  her  gift  for 

45 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

being  moved,  for  rendering  the  emotions  of 
those  in  whom  we  do  not  look  for  just  that 
kind  of  emotion,  she  affects  one  all  the 
time  as  being,  after  all,  removed  from  what 
she  sings  of;  an  artist  whose  sympathy  is  an 
instinct,  a  divination.  There  is  something 
automatic  in  all  fine  histrionic  genius,  and  I 
find  some  of  the  charm  of  the  automaton  in 
Yvette  Guilbert.  The  real  woman,  one  fan- 
cies, is  the  slim  bright-haired  girl  who  looks 
so  pleased  and  so  amused  when  you  applaud 
her,  and  whom  it  pleases  to  please  you,  just 
because  it  is  amusing.  She  could  not  tell 
you  how  she  happens  to  be  a  great  artist; 
how  she  has  found  a  voice  for  the  tragic 
comedy  of  cities;  how  it  is  that  she  makes 
you  cry  when  she  sings  of  sordid  miseries. 
"  That  is  her  secret,"  we  are  accustomed  to 
say;  and  I  like  to  imagine  that  it  is  a  secret 
which  she  herself  has  never  fathomed. 

II 

The  difference  between  Yvette  Guilbert 
and  every  one  else  on  the  music-hall  stage 
is  precisely  the  difference  between  Sarah 

46 


Yvette    Guilbert 

Bernhardt  and  every  one  else  on  the  stage 
of  legitimate  drama.  Elsewhere  you  may 
find  many  admirable  qualities,  many  bril- 
liant accomplishments,  but  nowhere  else  that 
revelation  of  an  extraordinarily  interesting 
personality  through  the  medium  of  an  ex- 
traordinarily finished  art.  Yvette  Guilbert 
has  something  new  to  say,  and  she  has  dis- 
covered a  new  way  of  saying  it.  She  has  had 
precursors,  but  she  has  eclipsed  them.  She 
sings,  for  instance,  songs  of  Aristide  Bru- 
ant,  songs  which  he  had  sung  before  her,  and 
sung  admirably,  in  his  brutal  and  elabo- 
rately careless  way.  But  she  has  found 
meanings  in  them  which  Bruant,  who  wrote 
them,  never  discovered,  or,  certainly,  could 
never  interpret;  she  has  surpassed  him  in  his 
own  quality,  the  macabre;  she  has  trans- 
formed the  rough  material,  which  had 
seemed  adequately  handled  until  she  showed 
how  much  more  could  be  done  with  it,  into 
something  artistically  fine  and  distinguished. 
And  just  as,  in  the  brutal  and  macabre  style, 
she  has  done  what  Bruant  was  only  trying  to 
do,  so,  in  the  style,  supposed  to  be  tradition- 
47 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ally  French,  of  delicate  insinuation,  she  has 
invented  new  shades  of  expression,  she  has 
discovered  a  whole  new  method  of  sugges- 
tion. And  it  is  here,  perhaps,  that  the  new 
material  which  she  has  known,  by  some 
happy  instinct,  how  to  lay  her  hands  on,  has 
been  of  most  service  to  her.  She  sings,  a 
little  cruelly,  of  the  young  girl;  and  the 
young  girl  of  her  songs  (that  demoiselle  de 
pensionnat  who  is  the  heroine  of  one  of  the 
most  famous  of  them)  is  a  very  different 
being  from  the  fair  abstraction,  even  rosier 
and  vaguer  to  the  French  mind  than  it  is  to 
the  English,  which  stands  for  the  ideal  of 
girlhood.  It  is,  rather,  the  young  girl  as 
Goncourt  has  rendered  her  in  "  Cherie,"  a 
creature  of  awakening,  half-unconscious 
sensations,  already  at  work  somewhat  abnor- 
mally in  an  anaemic  frame,  with  an  intelli- 
gence left  to  feed  mainly  on  itself.  And 
Yvette  herself,  with  her  bright  hair,  the 
sleepy  gold  fire  of  her  eyes,  her  slimness,  her 
gracious  awkwardness,  her  air  of  delusive 
innocence,  is  the  very  type  of  the  young  girl 
of  whom  she  sings.  There  is  a  certain  mal- 

48 


Yvette    Guilbert 

ice  in  it  all,  a  malicious  insistence  on  the 
other  side  of  innocence.  But  there  it  is,  a 
new  figure ;  and  but  one  among  the  creations 
which  we  owe  to  this  "comic  singer,"  whose 
comedy  is,  for  the  most  part,  so  serious  and 
so  tragic. 

For  the  art  of  Yvette  Guilbert  is  of  that 
essentially  modern  kind  which,  even  in  a  sub- 
ject supposed  to  be  comic,  a  subject  we  are 
accustomed  to  see  dealt  with,  if  dealt  with  at 
all,  in  burlesque,  seeks  mainly  for  the  real- 
ity of  things  (and  reality,  if  we  get  deep 
enough  into  it,  is  never  comic),  and  endeav- 
our to  find  a  new,  searching,  and  poignant 
expression  for  that.  It  is  an  art  concerned, 
for  the  most  part,  with  all  that  part  of  life 
which  the  conventions  were  intended  to  hide 
from  us.  We  see  a  world  where  people  are 
very  vicious  and  very  unhappy;  a  sordid, 
miserable  world  which  it  is  as  well  sometimes 
to  consider.  It  is  a  side  of  existence  which 
exists;  and  to  see  it  is  not  to  be  attracted 
towards  it.  It  is  a  grey  and  sordid  land, 
under  the  sway  of  "  Eros  vanne  " ;  it  is,  for 
the  most  part,  weary  of  itself,  without  rest, 
49 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

and  without  escape.  This  is  Yvette  Guil- 
bert's  domain;  she  sings  it,  as  no  one  has 
ever  sung  it  before,  with  a  tragic  realism, 
touched  with  a  sort  of  grotesque  irony,  which 
is  a  new  thing  on  any  stage.  The  rouleuse 
of  the  Quartier  Breda,  praying  to  the  one 
saint  in  her  calendar,  "  Sainte  Galette"; 
the  soularde,  whom  the  urchins  follow  and 
throw  stones  at  in  the  street;  the  whole  life 
of  the  slums  and  the  gutter:  these  are  her 
subjects,  and  she  brings  them,  by  some  mar- 
vellous fineness  of  treatment,  into  the  sphere 
of  art.  rv 

It  is  all  a  question  of  metier,  no  doubt, 
though  how  far  her  method  is  conscious  and 
deliberate  it  is  difficult  to  say.  But  she  has 
certain  quite  obvious  qualities,  of  reticence, 
of  moderation,  of  suspended  emphasis, 
which  can  scarcely  be  other  than  conscious 
and  deliberate.  She  uses  but  few  gestures, 
and  these  brief,  staccato,  and  for  an  imme- 
diate purpose ;  her  hands,  in  their  long  black 
gloves,  are  almost  motionless,  the  arms  hang 
limply;  and  yet  every  line  of  the  face  and 
body  seems  alive,  alive  and  repressed.  Her 

50 


Yvette   Guilbert 

voice  can  be  harsh  or  sweet,  as  she  would  have 
it,  can  laugh  or  cry,  be  menacing  or  caress- 
ing ;  it  is  never  used  for  its  own  sake,  decora- 
tively,  but  for  a  purpose,  for  an  effect.  And 
how  every  word  tells !  Every  word  comes  to 
you  clearly,  carrying  exactly  its  meaning; 
and,  somehow,  along  with  the  words,  an  emo- 
tion, which  you  may  resolve  to  ignore,  but 
which  will  seize  upon  you,  which  will  go 
through  and  through  you.  Trick  or  instinct, 
there  it  is,  the  power  to  make  you  feel  in- 
tensely ;  and  that  is  precisely  the  final  test  of 
a  great  dramatic  artist. 


51 


SIR    HENRY    IRVING 

As  I  watched,  at  the  Lyceum,  the  sad  and 
eager  face  of  Duse,  leaning  forward  out  of 
a  box,  and  gazing  at  the  eager  and  gentle 
face  of  Irving,  I  could  not  help  contrasting 
the  two  kinds  of  acting  summed  up  in  those 
two  faces.  The  play  was  "  Olivia,"  W.  G. 
Wills'  poor  and  stagey  version  of  "The 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  in  which,  however,  not 
even  the  lean  intelligence  of  a  modern  play- 
wright could  quite  banish  the  homely  and 
gracious  and  tender  charm  of  Goldsmith. 
As  Dr.  Primrose,  Irving  was  almost  at  his 
best ;  that  is  to  say,  not  at  his  greatest,  but  at 
his  most  equable  level  of  good  acting.  All 
his  distinction  was  there,  his  nobility,  his  re- 
straint, his  fine  convention.  For  Irving  rep- 
resents the  old  school  of  acting,  just  as  Duse 
represents  the  new  school.  To  Duse,  acting 
is  a  thing  almost  wholly  apart  from  action; 
she  thinks  on  the  stage,  scarcely  moves  there; 
when  she  feels  emotion,  it  is  her  chief  care 
52 


Sir  Henry  Irving 

not  to  express  it  with  emphasis,  but  to  press 
it  down  into  her  soul,  until  only  the  pained 
reflection  of  it  glimmers  out  of  her  eyes  and 
trembles  in  the  hollows  of  her  cheeks.  To 
Irving,  on  the  contrary,  acting  is  all  that  the 
word  literally  means;  it  is  an  art  of  sharp, 
detached,  yet  always  delicate  movement;  he 
crosses  the  stage  with  intention,  as  he  inten- 
tionally adopts  a  fine,  crabbed,  personal, 
highly  conventional  elocution  of  his  own;  he 
is  an  actor,  and  he  acts,  keeping  nature,  or 
the  too  close  resemblance  of  nature,  care- 
fully out  of  his  composition. 

With  Miss  Terry  there  is  permanent 
charm  of  a  very  natural  nature,  which 
has  become  deliciously  sophisticated.  She  is 
the  eternal  girl,  and  she  can  never  grow  old ; 
one  might  say,  she  can  never  grow  up.  She 
learns  her  part,  taking  it  quite  artificially, 
as  a  part  to  be  learnt ;  and  then,  at  her  fre- 
quent moments  of  forgetfulness,  charms  us 
into  delight,  though  not  always  into  convic- 
tion, by  a  gay  abandonment  to  the  self  of  a 
passing  moment.  Irving's  acting  is  almost  a 
science,  and  it  is  a  science  founded  on  tradi- 

53 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

tion.  It  is  in  one  sense  his  personality  that 
makes  him  what  he  is,  the  only  actor  on  the 
English  stage  who  has  a  touch  of  genius. 
But  he  has  not  gone  to  himself  to  invent  an 
art  wholly  personal,  wholly  new;  his  acting 
is  no  interruption  of  an  intense  inner  life, 
but  a  craftsmanship  into  which  he  has  put 
all  he  has  to  give.  It  is  an  art  wholly  of 
rhetoric,  that  is  to  say  wholly  external;  his 
emotion  moves  to  slow  music,  crystallises 
into  an  attitude,  dies  upon  a  long-drawn-out 
word.  He  appeals  to  us,  to  our  sense  of 
what  is  expected,  to  our  accustomed  sense  of 
the  logic,  not  of  life,  but  of  life  as  we  have 
always  seen  it  on  the  stage,  by  his  way  of 
taking  snuff,  of  taking  out  his  pocket-hand- 
kerchief, of  lifting  his  hat,  of  crossing  his 
legs.  He  has  observed  life  in  order  to  make 
his  own  version  of  life,  using  the  stage  as  his 
medium,  and  accepting  the  traditional  aids 
and  limitations  of  the  stage. 

Take  him  in  one  of  his  typical  parts,  in 
"  Louis  XI."  His  Louis  XI.  is  a  master- 
piece of  grotesque  art.  It  is  a  study  in  senil- 
ity, and  it  is  the  grotesque  art  of  the  thing 

54 


Sir  Henry  Irving 

which  saves  it  from  becoming  painful.  This 
shrivelled  carcase,  from  which  age,  disease, 
and  fear  have  picked  all  the  flesh,  leaving  the 
bare  framework  of  bone  and  the  drawn  and 
cracked  covering  of  yellow  skin,*  would  be 
unendurable  in  its  irreverent  copy  of  age  if 
it  were  not  so  obviously  a  picture,  with  no 
more  malice  than  there  is  in  the  delicate  lines 
and  fine  colours  of  a  picture.  The  figure  is 
at  once  Punch  and  the  oldest  of  the  Chel- 
sea pensioners ;  it  distracts  one  between  pity, 
terror,  and  disgust,  but  is  altogether  absorb- 
ing ;  one  watches  it  as  one  would  watch  some 
feeble  ancient  piece  of  mechanism,  still 
working,  which  may  snap  at  any  moment. 
In  such  a  personation,  make-up  becomes  a 
serious  part  of  art.  It  is  the  picture  that 
magnetises  us,  and  every  wrinkle  seems  to 
have  been  studied  in  movement;  the  hands 
act  almost  by  themselves,  as  if  every  finger 
were  a  separate  actor.  The  passion  of  fear, 
the  instinct  of  craft,  the  malady  of  suspi- 
cion, in  a  frail  old  man  who  has  power  over 
every  one  but  himself:  that  is  what  Sir 
Henry  Irving  represents,  in  a  performance 

55 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

which  is  half  precise  physiology,  half  pal- 
pable artifice,  but  altogether  a  unique  thing 
in  art. 

See  him  in  "  The  Merchant  of  Venice." 
His  Shylock  is  noble  and  sordid,  pathetic 
and  terrifying.  It  is  one  of  his  great  parts, 
made  up  of  pride,  stealth,  anger,  minute  and 
varied  picturesqueness,  and  a  diabolical  sub- 
tlety. Whether  he  paws  at  his  cloak,  or 
clutches  upon  the  handle  of  his  stick,  or 
splutters  hatred,  or  cringes  before  his  prey, 
or  shakes  with  lean  and  wrinkled  laughter, 
he  is  always  the  great  part  and  the  great  ac- 
tor. See  him  as  Mephistopheles  in  "  Faust." 
The  Lyceum  performance  was  a  superb  pan- 
tomime, with  one  overpowering  figure  drift- 
ing through  it  and  in  some  sort  directing  it, 
the  red-plumed  devil  Mephistopheles,  who, 
in  Sir  Henry  Irving's  impersonation  of  him, 
becomes  a  kind  of  weary  spirit,  a  melancholy 
image  of  unhappy  pride,  holding  himself  up 
to  the  laughter  of  inferior  beings,  with  the 
old  acknowledgment  that  "the  devil  is  an 
ass."  A  head  like  the  head  of  Dante,  shown 
up  by  coloured  lights,  and  against  chromo- 

56 


Sir  Henry  Irving 

lithographic  backgrounds,  while  all  the  dia- 
bolic intelligence  is  set  to  work  on  the  cheap 
triumph  of  wheedling  a  widow  and  screwing 
Rhenish  and  Tokay  with  a  gimlet  out  of  an 
inn  table:  it  is  partly  Goethe's  fault,  and 
partly  the  fault  of  Wills,  and  partly  the  low- 
ering trick  of  the  stage.  Mephistopheles  is 
not  really  among  Irving's  great  parts,  but  it 
is  among  his  picturesque  parts.  With  his 
restless  strut,  a  blithe  and  aged  tripping  of 
the  feet  to  some  not  quite  human  measure,  he 
is  like  some  spectral  marionette,  playing  a 
game  only  partly  his  own.  In  such  a  part 
no  mannerism  can  seem  unnatural,  and  the 
image  with  its  solemn  mask  lives  in  a  kind  of 
galvanic  life  of  its  own,  seductively,  with 
some  mocking  suggestion  of  his  "  cousin  the 
snake."  Here  and  there  some  of  the  old 
power  may  be  lacking;  but  whatever  was 
once  subtle  and  insinuating  remains. 

Shakespeare  at  the  Lyceum  is  always  a 
magnificent  spectacle,  and  "  Coriolanus," 
the  last  Shakespearean  revival  there,  was  a 
magnificent  spectacle.  It  is  a  play  made  up 
principally  of  one  character  and  a  crowd,  the 

57 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

crowd  being  a  sort  of  moving  background, 
treated  in  Shakespeare's  large  and  scornful 
way.  A  stage  crowd  at  the  Lyceum  always 
gives  one  a  sense  of  exciting  movement,  and 
this  Roman  rabble  did  all  that  was  needed  to 
show  off  the  almost  solitary  splendour  of 
Coriolanus.  He  is  the  proudest  man  in 
Shakespeare,  and  Sir  Henry  Irving  is  at  his 
best  when  he  embodies  pride.  His  concep- 
tion of  the  part  was  masterly ;  it  had  imagi- 
nation, nobility,  quietude.  With  opportu- 
nity for  ranting  in  every  second  speech,  he 
never  ranted,  but  played  what  might  well 
have  been  a  roaring  part  with  a  kind  of  gen- 
tleness. With  every  opportunity  for  extrav- 
agant gesture,  he  stood,  as  the  play  seemed 
to  foam  about  him,  like  a  rock  against  which 
the  foam  beats.  Made  up  as  a  kind  of  Ro- 
man Moltke,  the  lean,  thoughtful  soldier,  he 
spoke  throughout  with  a  slow,  contemptuous 
enunciation,  as  of  one  only  just  not  too  lofty 
to  sneer.  Restrained  in  scorn,  he  kept 
throughout  an  attitude  of  disdainful  pride, 
the  face,  the  eyes,  set,  while  only  his 
mouth  twitched,  seeming  to  chew  his 

58 


Sir  Henry  Irving 

words,  with  the  disgust  of  one  swal- 
lowing a  painful  morsel.  Where  other 
actors  would  have  raved,  he  spoke  with 
bitter  humour,  a  humour  that  seemed  to  hurt 
the  speaker,  the  concise,  active  humour  of  the 
soldier,  putting  his  words  rapidly  into  deeds. 
And  his  pride  was  an  intellectual  pride;  the 
weakness  of  a  character,  but  the  angry  dig- 
nity of  a  temperament.  I  have  never  seen 
Irving  so  restrained,  so  much  an  artist,  so 
faithfully  interpretative  of  a  masterpiece. 
Something  of  energy,  no  doubt,  was  lack- 
ing; but  everything  was  there,  except  the  em- 
phasis which  I  most  often  wish  away  in 
acting. 


DUSE  IN  SOME  OF  HER  PARTS 


THE  acting  of  Duse  is  a  criticism ;  poor  work 
dissolves  away  under  it,  as  under  a  solvent 
acid.  Not  one  of  the  plays  which  she  has 
brought  with  her  is  a  play  on  the  level  of  her 
intelligence  and  of  her  capacity  for  express- 
ing deep  human  emotion.  Take  "  The  Sec- 
ond Mrs.  Tanqueray."  It  is  a  very  able 
play,  it  is  quite  an  interesting  glimpse  into  a 
particular  kind  of  character,  but  it  is  only 
able,  and  it  is  only  a  glimpse.  Paula,  as  con- 
ceived by  Mr.  Pinero,  is  a  thoroughly  Eng- 
lish type  of  woman,  the  nice,  slightly  morbid, 
somewhat  unintelligently  capricious  woman 
who  has  "gone  wrong,"  and  who  finds  it 
quite  easy,  though  a  little  dull,  to  go  right 
when  the  chance  is  offered  to  her.  She  is  ob- 
served from  the  outside,  very  keenly  ob- 
served; her  ways,  her  surface  tricks  of  emo- 
tion, are  caught;  she  is  a  person  whom  we 
60 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

know  or  remember.  But  what  is  skin-deep 
in  Paula  as  conceived  by  Mr.  Pinero  be- 
comes a  real  human  being,  a  human  being 
with  a  soul,  in  the  Paula  conceived  by  Duse. 
Paula  as  played  by  Duse  is  sad  and  sincere, 
where  the  Englishwoman  is  only  irritable; 
she  has  the  Italian  simplicity  and  directness 
in  place  of  that  terrible  English  capacity  for 
uncertainty  in  emotion  and  huffiness  in  man- 
ner. She  brings  profound  tragedy,  the  trag- 
edy of  a  soul  which  has  sinned  and  suffered, 
and  tries  vainly  to  free  itself  from  the  conse- 
quences of  its  deeds,  into  a  study  of  circum- 
stances in  their  ruin  of  material  happiness. 
And,  frankly,  the  play  cannot  stand  it. 
When  this  woman  bows  down  under  her  fate 
in  so  terrible  a  spiritual  loneliness,  realising 
that  we  cannot  fight  against  Fate,  and  that 
Fate  is  only  the  inevitable  choice  of  our  own 
natures,  we  wrait  for  the  splendid  words 
which  shall  render  so  great  a  situation;  and 
no  splendid  words  come.  The  situation,  to  the 
dramatist,  has  been  only  a  dramatic  situa- 
tion. Here  is  Duse,  a  chalice  for  the  wine 
of  imagination,  but  the  chalice  remains 
61 


Play  s 3  Acting,  and  Music 

empty.  It  is  almost  painful  to  see  her  wait- 
ing for  the  words  that  do  not  come,  offering 
tragedy  to  us  in  her  eyes,  and  with  her  hands, 
and  in  her  voice,  only  not  in  the  words  that 
she  says  or  in  the  details  of  the  action  which 
she  is  condemned  to  follow. 

See  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  playing  "  The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,"  and  you  will  see 
it  played  exactly  according  to  Mr.  Pinero's 
intention,  and  played  brilliantly  enough  to 
distract  our  notice  from  what  is  lacking  in 
the  character.  A  fantastic  and  delightful 
contradiction,  half  gamine,  half  Burne- 
Jones,  she  confuses  our  judgment,  as  a 
Paula  in  real  life  might,  and  leaves  us  at- 
tracted and  repelled,  and,  above  all,  inter- 
ested. But  Duse  has  no  resources  outside 
simple  human  nature.  If  she  cannot  con- 
vince you  by  the  thing  in  itself,  she  cannot 
disconcert  you  by  a  paradox  about  it.  Well, 
this  passionately  sincere  acting,  this  one  real 
person  moving  about  among  the  dolls  of  the 
piece,  shows  up  all  that  is  mechanical,  forced, 
and  unnatural  in  the  construction  of  a  play 
never  meant  to  withstand  the  searchlight  of 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

this  woman's  creative  intelligence.  What- 
ever is  theatrical  and  obvious  starts  out  into 
sight.  The  good  things  are  transfigured,  the 
bad  things  merely  discovered.  And  so,  by  a 
kind  of  naivete  in  the  acceptance  of  emotion 
for  all  it  might  be,  instead  of  for  the  little 
that  it  is,  by  an  almost  perverse  simplicity 
and  sincerity  in  the  treatment  of  a  superfi- 
cial and  insincere  character,  Duse  plays 
"  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  "  in  the  grand 
manner,  destroying  the  illusion  of  the  play 
as  she  proves  over  again  the  supremacy  of 
her  own  genius. 

II 

While  I  watch  Duse's  Magda,  I  can  con- 
ceive, for  the  time,  of  no  other.  Realising 
the  singer  as  being  just  such  an  artist  as  her- 
self, she  plays  the  part  with  hardly  a  sugges- 
tion of  the  stage,  except  the  natural  woman's 
intermittent  loathing  for  it.  She  has  been  a 
great  artist;  yes,  but  that  is  nothing  to  her. 
"  I  am  I,"  as  she  says,  and  she  has  lived.  And 
we  see  before  us,  all  through  the  play,  a 
woman  who  has  lived  with  all  her  capacity 
for  joy  and  sorrow,  who  has  thought  with  all 

63 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

her  capacity  for  seeing  clearly  what  she  is 
unable,  perhaps,  to  help  doing.  She  does  not 
act,  that  is,  explain  herself  to  us,  emphasise 
herself  for  us.  She  lets  us  overlook  her,  with 
a  supreme  unconsciousness,  a  supreme  affec- 
tation of  unconsciousness,  which  is  of  course 
very  conscious  art,  an  art  so  perfect  as  to  be 
almost  literally  deceptive.  I  do  not  know  if 
she  plays  with  exactly  the  same  gestures 
night  after  night,  but  I  can  quite  imagine  it. 
She  has  certain  little  caresses,  the  half  awk- 
ward caresses  of  real  people,  not  the  elegant 
curves  and  convolutions  of  the  stage,  which 
always  enchant  me  beyond  any  mimetic 
movements  I  have  ever  seen.  She  has  a  way 
of  letting  her  voice  apparently  get  beyond 
her  own  control,  and  of  looking  as  if  emotion 
has  left  her  face  expressionless,  as  it  often 
leaves  the  faces  of  real  people,  thus  carrying 
the  illusion  of  reality  almost  further  than  it 
is  possible  to  carry  it,  only  never  quite. 

I  was  looking  this  afternoon  at  Whistler's 
portrait  of  Carlyle  at  the  Guildhall,  and  I 
find  in  both  the  same  final  art:  that  art  of 
perfect  expression,  perfect  suppression,  per- 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

feet  balance  of  every  quality,  so  that  a  kind 
of  negative  thing  becomes  a  thing  of  the 
highest  achievement.  Name  every  fault  to 
which  the  art  of  the  actor  is  liable,  and  you 
will  have  named  every  fault  which  is  lacking 
in  Duse.  And  the  art  of  the  actor  is  in  itself 
so  much  a  compound  of  false  emphasis  and 
every  kind  of  wilful  exaggeration,  that  to 
have  any  negative  merit  is  to  have  already  a 
merit  very  positive.  Having  cleared  away 
all  that  is  not  wanted,  Duse  begins  to  create. 
And  she  creates  out  of  life  itself  an  art 
which  no  one  before  her  had  ever  imagined : 
not  realism,  not  a  copy,  but  the  thing  itself , 
the  evocation  of  thoughtful  life,  the  creation 
of  the  world  over  again,  as  actual  and  beau- 
tiful a  thing  as  if  the  world  had  never 
existed. 

Ill 

"La  Gioconda"  is  the  first  play  in  which 
Duse  has  had  beautiful  words  to  speak,  and 
a  poetical  conception  of  character  to  render; 
and  her  acting  in  it  is  more  beautiful  and 
more  poetical  than  it  was  possible  for  it  to  be 
in  "  Magda,"  or  in  "  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 

65 


Plays,,  Acting,  and  Music 

queray."  But  the  play  is  not  a  good  play;  at 
its  best  it  is  lyrical  rather  than  dramatic,  and 
at  its  worst  it  is  horrible  with  a  vulgar  ma- 
terial horror.  The  end  of  "  Titus  Androni- 
cus"  is  not  so  revolting  as  the  end  of  "La 
Gioconda."  D'Annunzio  has  put  as  a  motto 
on  his  title-page  the  sentence  of  Leonardo 
da  Vinci :  "  Cosa  bella  mortal  passa,  e  non 
d'arte,"  and  the  action  of  the  play  is  intended 
as  a  symbol  of  the  possessing  and  destroying 
mastery  of  art  and  of  beauty.  But  the  idea 
is  materialised  into  a  form  of  grotesque  hor- 
ror, and  all  the  charm  of  the  atmosphere  and 
the  grace  of  the  words  cannot  redeem  a  con- 
clusion so  inartistic  in  its  painfulness.  But, 
all  the  same,  the  play  is  the  work  of  a  poet, 
it  brings  imagination  upon  the  stage,  and  it 
gives  Duse  an  opportunity  of  being  her 
finest  self.  All  the  words  she  speaks  are  sen- 
sitive words,  she  moves  in  the  midst  of  beau- 
tiful things,  her  whole  life  seems  to  flow  into 
a  more  harmonious  rhythm,  for  all  the  vio- 
lence of  its  sorrow  and  suffering.  Her  act- 
ing at  the  end,  all  through  the  inexcusable 
brutality  of  the  scene  in  which  she  appears 
66 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

before  us  with  her  mutilated  hands  covered 
under  long  hanging  sleeves,  is,  in  the  dignity, 
intensity,  and  humanity  of  its  pathos,  a  thing 
of  beauty,  of  a  profound  kind  of  beauty, 
made  up  of  pain,  endurance,  and  the  irony 
of  pitiable  things  done  in  vain.  Here  she  is 
no  longer  transforming  a  foreign  conception 
of  character  into  her  own  conception  of  what 
character  should  be;  she  is  embodying  the 
creation  of  an  Italian,  of  an  artist,  and  a 
creation  made  in  her  honour.  D'Annunzio's 
tragedy  is,  in  the  final  result,  bad  tragedy, 
but  it  is  a  failure  of  a  far  higher  order  than 
such  successes  as  Mr.  Pinero's.  It  is  written 
with  a  consciousness  of  beauty,  with  a  fe- 
verish energy  which  is  still  energy,  with  a 
sense  of  what  is  imaginative  in  the  facts  of 
actual  life.  It  is  written  in  Italian  which  is 
a  continual  delight  to  the  ear,  prose  which 
sounds  as  melodious  as  verse,  prose  to  which, 
indeed,  all  dramatic  probability  is  sacrificed. 
And  Duse  seems  to  acquire  a  new  subtlety, 
as  she  speaks  at  last  words  in  themselves 
worthy  of  her  speaking.  It  is  as  if  she  at 
last  spoke  her  own  language. 

67 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

IV 

Dumas  fils  has  put  his  best  work  into  the 
novel  of  "  La  Dame  aux  Camelias,"  which  is 
a  kind  of  slighter,  more  superficial,  more  sen- 
timental, more  modern,  but  less  universal 
"  Manon  Lescaut."  There  is  a  certain  arti- 
ficial, genuinely  artificial,  kind  of  nature  in 
it :  if  not  "  true  to  life,"  it  is  true  to  certain 
lives.  But  the  play  lets  go  this  hold,  such  as 
it  is,  on  reality,  and  becomes  a  mere  stage 
convention  as  it  crosses  the  footlights ;  a  con- 
vention which  is  touching,  indeed,  far  too 
full  of  pathos,  human  in  its  exaggerated 
way,  but  no  longer  to  be  mistaken,  by  the 
least  sensitive  of  hearers,  for  great  or  even 
fine  literature.  And  the  sentiment  in  it  is 
not  so  much  human  as  French,  a  factitious 
idealism  in  depravity  which  one  associates 
peculiarly  with  Paris.  Marguerite  Gautier 
is  the  type  of  the  nice  woman  who  sins  and 
loves,  and  becomes  regenerated  by  an  un- 
natural kind  of  self-sacrifice,  done  for 
French  family  reasons.  She  is  the  Parisian 
whom  Sarah  Bernhardt  impersonates  per- 
fectly in  that  hysterical  and  yet  deliberate 
68 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

manner  which  is  made  for  such  impersona- 
tions. Duse,  as  she  does  always,  turns  her 
into  quite  another  kind  of  woman;  not  the 
light  woman,  to  whom  love  has  come  sud- 
denly, as  a  new  sentiment  coming  suddenly 
into  her  life,  but  the  simple,  instinctively 
loving  woman,  in  whom  we  see  nothing  of 
the  demi-monde,  only  the  natural  woman  in 
love.  Throughout  the  play  she  has  mo- 
ments, whole  scenes,  of  absolute  greatness, 
as  fine  as  anything  she  has  ever  done:  but 
there  are  other  moments  when  she  seems  to 
carry  repression  too  far.  Her  pathos,  as  in 
the  final  scene,  and  at  the  end  of  the  scene  of 
the  reception,  where  she  repeats  the  one  word 
"Armando"  over  and  over  again,  in  an 
amazed  and  agonising  reproachfulness,  is  of 
the  finest  order  of  pathos.  She  appeals  to 
us  by  a  kind  of  goodness,  much  deeper  than 
the  sentimental  goodness  intended  by  Du- 
mas. It  is  love  itself  that  she  gives  us,  love 
utterly  unconscious  of  anything  but  itself, 
uncontaminated,  unspoilt.  She  is  Mile,  de 
Lespinasse  rather  than  Marguerite  Gautier; 
a  creature  in  whom  ardour  is  as  simple  as 
69 


Plays,,  Acting,  and  Music 

breath,  and  devotion  a  part  of  ardour.  Her 
physical  suffering  is  scarcely  to  be  noticed; 
it  is  the  suffering  of  her  soul  that  Duse  gives 
us.  And  she  gives  us  this  as  if  nature  itself 
came  upon  the  boards,  and  spoke  to  us  with- 
out even  the  ordinary  disguise  of  human  be- 
ings in  their  intercourse  with  one  another. 
Once  more  an  artificial  play  becomes  sincere; 
once  more  the  personality  of  a  great  imper- 
sonal artist  dominates  the  poverty  of  her 
part;  we  get  one  more  revelation  of  a  partic- 
ular phase  of  Duse.  And  it  would  be  unrea- 
sonable to  complain  that "  La  Dame  aux  Ca- 
melias  "  is  really  something  quite  different, 
something  much  inferior;  here  we  have  at 
least  a  great  emotion,  a  desperate  sincerity, 
with  all  the  thoughtfulness  which  can  pos- 
sibly accompany  passion. 

V 

Dumas,  in  a  preface  better  than  his  play, 
tells  us  that  " La  Princesse  Georges "  is  "a 
Soul  in  conflict  with  Instincts."  But  no,  as 
he  has  drawn  her,  as  he  has  placed  her,  she 
is  only  the  theory  of  a  woman  in  conflict 
70 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

with  the  mechanical  devices  of  a  plot.  All 
these  characters  talk  as  they  have  been 
taught,  and  act  according  to  the  tradition  of 
the  stage.  It  is  a  double  piece  of  mechanism, 
that  is  all;  there  is  no  creation  of  character, 
there  is  a  kind  of  worldly  wisdom  through- 
out, but  not  a  glimmer  of  imagination;  ar- 
gument drifts  into  sentiment,  and  sentiment 
returns  into  argument,  without  conviction; 
the  end  is  no  conclusion,  but  an  arbitrary 
break  in  an  action  which  we  see  continuing, 
after  the  curtain  has  fallen.  And,  as  in 
"  Fedora,"  Duse  comes  into  the  play  resolved 
to  do  what  the  author  has  not  done.  Does 
she  deliberately  choose  the  plays  most  obvi- 
ously not  written  for  her  in  order  to  extort 
a  triumph  out  of  her  enemies?  Once  more 
she  acts  consciously,  openly,  making  every 
moment  of  an  unreal  thing  real,  by  concen- 
trating herself  upon  every  moment  as  if  it 
were  the  only  one.  The  result  is  a  perform- 
ance miraculous  in  detail,  and,  if  detail  were 
everything,  it  would  be  a  great  part.  With 
powdered  hair,  she  is  beautiful  and  a  great 
lady;  as  the  domesticated  princess,  she  has 

71 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

all  the  virtues,  and  honesty  itself,  in  her  face 
and  in  her  movements;  she  gives  herself 
with  a  kind  of  really  unreflecting  thought- 
fulness  to  every  sentiment  which  is  half  her 
emotion.  If  such  a  woman  could  exist,  and 
she  could  not,  she  would  be  that,  precisely 
that.  But  just  as  we  are  beginning  to  be- 
lieve, not  only  in  her  but  in  the  play  itself, 
in  comes  the  spying  lady's  maid,  or  the  valet 
who  spies  on  the  lady's  maid,  and  we  are  in 
melodrama  again,  and  among  the  strings 
of  the  marionettes.  Where  are  the  three 
stages,  truth,  philosophy,  conscience,  which 
Dumas  offers  to  us  in  his  preface  as  the 
three  stages  by  which  a  work  of  dramatic 
art  reaches  perfection?  Shown  us  by  Duse, 
from  moment  to  moment,  yes;  but  in  the 
piece,  no,  scarcely  more  than  in  "  Fedora." 
So  fatal  is  it  to  write  for  our  instruction,  as 
fatal  as  to  write  for  our  amusement.  A 
work  of  art  must  suggest  everything,  but 
it  must  prove  nothing.  Bad  imaginative 
work  like  "La  Gioconda"  is  really,  in  its 
way,  better  than  this  unimaginative  and 
theoretical  falseness  to  life;  for  it  at  least 

72 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

shows  us  beauty,  even  though  it  degrades 
that  beauty  before  our  eyes.  And  Duse,  of 
all  actresses  the  nearest  to  nature,  was  born 
to  create  beauty,  that  beauty  which  is  the 
deepest  truth  of  natural  things.  Why  does 
she  after  all  only  tantalise  us,  showing  us 
little  fragments  of  her  soul  under  many  dis- 
guises, but  never  giving  us  her  whole  self 
through  the  revealing  medium  of  a  master- 
piece? 

VI 

"Fedora"  is  a  play  written  for  Sarah 
Bernhardt  by  the  writer  of  plays  for  Sarah 
Bernhardt,  and  it  contains  the  usual  ingre- 
dients of  that  particular  kind  of  scorcery:  a 
Russian  tigress,  an  assassination,  a  suicide, 
exotic  people  with  impulses  in  conflict  with 
their  intentions,  good  working  evil  and  evil 
working  good,  not  according  to  a  philosophi- 
cal idea,  but  for  the  convenience  of  a  melo- 
dramatic plot.  As  artificial,  as  far  from  life 
on  the  one  hand  and  poetry  on  the  other,  as 
a  jig  of  marionettes  at  the  end  of  a  string, 
it  has  the  absorbing  momentary  interest  of 
a  problem  in  events.  Character  does  not 
73 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

exist,  only  impulse  and  event.  And  Duse 
comes  into  this  play  with  a  desperate  resolve 
to  fill  it  with  honest  emotion,  to  be  what  a 
woman  would  really  perhaps  be  if  life  turned 
melodramatic  with  her.  Visibly,  deliber- 
ately, she  acts:  "  Fedora  "  is  not  to  be  trans- 
formed unawares  into  life.  But  her  acting 
is  like  that  finest  kind  of  acting  which  we 
meet  with  in  real  life,  when  we  are  able  to 
watch  some  choice  scene  of  the  human  com- 
edy being  played  before  us.  She  becomes 
the  impossible  thing  that  Fedora  is,  and,  in 
that  tour  de  force,  she  does  some  almost  im- 
possible things  by  the  way.  There  is  a 
scene  in  which  the  blood  fades  out  of  her 
cheeks  until  they  seem  to  turn  to  dry  earth 
furrowed  with  wrinkles.  She  makes  trium- 
phant point  after  triumphant  point  (her  in- 
telligence being  free  to  act  consciously  on 
this  unintelligent  matter),  and  we  notice, 
more  than  in  her  finer  parts,  individual  move- 
ments, gestures,  tones:  the  attitude  of  her 
open  hand  upon  a  door,  certain  blind  ca- 
resses with  her  fingers  as  they  cling  for  the 
last  time  to  her  lover's  cheeks,  her  face  as 

74 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts 

she  reads  a  letter,  the  art  of  her  voice  as  she 
almost  deliberately  takes  us  in  with  these 
emotional  artifices  of  Sardou.  When  it  is 
all  over,  and  we  think  of  the  Silvia  of  "  La 
Gioconda,"  of  the  woman  we  divine  under 
Magda  and  under  Paula  Tanqueray,  it  is 
with  a  certain  sense  of  waste ;  for  even  Paula 
can  be  made  to  seem  something  which  Fedora 
can  never  be  made  to  seem.  In  "  Fedora  " 
we  have  a  sheer,  undisguised  piece  of  stage- 
craft, without  even  the  amount  of  psycho- 
logical intention  of  Mr.  Pinero,  much  less  of 
Sudermann.  It  is  a  detective  story  with 
horrors,  and  it  is  far  too  positive  and  finished 
a  thing  to  be  transformed  into  something 
not  itself.  Sardou  is  a  hard  taskmaster;  he 
chains  his  slaves.  Without  nobility  or  even 
coherence  of  conception,  without  inner  life 
or  even  a  recognisable  semblance  of  exterior 
life,  the  piece  goes  by  clockwork ;  you  cannot 
make  the  hands  go  faster  or  slower,  or  bring 
its  mid-day  into  agreement  with  the  sun.  A 
great  actress,  who  is  also  a  great  intelligence, 
is  seen  accepting  it,  for  its  purpose,  with 
contempt,  as  a  thing  to  exercise  her  technical 

75 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

skill  upon.  As  a  piece  of  technical  skill, 
Duse's  acting  in  "  Fedora  "  is  as  fine  as  any- 
thing she  has  done.  It  completes  our  admi- 
ration of  her  genius,  as  it  proves  to  us  that 
she  can  act  to  perfection  a  part  in  which 
the  soul  is  left  out  of  the  question,  in  which 
nothing  happens  according  to  nature,  and  in 
which  life  is  figured  as  a  long  attack  of 
nerves,  relieved  by  the  occasional  interval  of 
an  uneasy  sleep. 


76 


ANNOTATIONS  BY  THE  WAY 

I.    "PELLEAS   AND    MELISANDE " 

"PELLEAS  AND  MELISANDE"  is  the  most 
beautiful  of  Maeterlinck's  plays,  and  to  say 
this  is  to  say  that  it  is  the  most  beautiful  con- 
temporary play.  Maeterlinck's  theatre  of 
marionettes,  who  are  at  the  same  time  chil- 
dren and  spirits,  at  once  more  simple  and 
more  abstract  than  real  people,  is  the  reac- 
tion of  the  imagination  against  the  wholly 
prose  theatre  of  Ibsen,  into  which  life  comes 
nakedly,  cruelly,  subtly,  but  without  dis- 
tinction, without  poetry.  Maeterlinck  has  in- 
vented plays  which  are  pictures,  in  which  the 
crudity  of  action  is  subdued  into  misty  out- 
lines. People  with  strange  names,  living  in 
impossible  places,  where  there  are  only 
woods  and  fountains,  and  towers  by  the  sea- 
shore, and  ancient  castles,  where  there  are 
no  towns,  and  where  the  common  crowd  of 
the  world  is  shut  out  of  sight  and  hearing, 
77 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

move  like  quiet  ghosts  across  the  stage,  mys- 
terious to  us  and  not  less  mysterious  to  one 
another.  They  are  all  lamenting  because 
they  do  not  know,  because  they  cannot  un- 
derstand, because  their  own  souls  are  so 
strange  to  them,  and  each  other's  souls  like 
pitiful  enemies,  giving  deadly  wounds  un- 
willingly. They  are  always  in  dread,  be- 
cause they  know  that  nothing  is  certain  in 
the  world  or  in  their  own  hearts,  and  they 
know  that  love  most  often  does  the  work  of 
hate  and  that  hate  is  sometimes  tenderer 
than  love.  In  "  Pelleas  and  Melisande  "  we 
have  two  innocent  lovers,  to  whom  love  is 
guilt;  we  have  blind  vengeance,  aged  and 
helpless  wisdom ;  we  have  the  conflict  of  pas- 
sions fighting  in  the  dark,  destroying  what 
they  desire  most  in  the  world.  And  out  of 
this  tragic  tangle  Maeterlinck  has  made  a 
play  which  is  too  full  of  beauty  to  be  pain- 
ful. We  feel  an  exquisite  sense  of  pity,  so 
impersonal  as  to  be  almost  healing,  as  if 
our  own  sympathy  had  somehow  set  right 
the  wrongs  of  the  play. 

And  this  play,  translated  with  delicate 
78 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

fidelity  by  Mr.  Mackail,  has  been  acted 
again  by  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  and  Mr. 
Martin  Harvey,  to  the  accompaniment  of 
M.  Faure's  music,  and  in  the  midst  of 
scenery  which  gave  a  series  of  beautiful 
pictures,  worthy  of  the  play.  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell, in  whose  art  there  is  so  much  that  is 
pictorial,  has  never  been  so  pictorial  as  in 
the  character  of  Melisande.  At  the  begin- 
ning I  thought  she  was  acting  with  more 
effort  and  less  effect  than  in  the  original 
performance;  but  as  the  play  went  on  she 
abandoned  herself  more  and  more  simply 
to  the  part  she  was  acting,  and  in  the  death 
scene  had  a  kind  of  quiet,  poignant,  reticent 
perfection.  A  plaintive  figure  out  of  tapes- 
try, a  child  out  of  a  nursery  tale,  she  made 
one  feel  at  once  the  remoteness  and  the  hu- 
manity of  this  waif  of  dreams,  the  little 
princess  who  does  know  that  it  is  wrong  to 
love.  In  the  great  scene  by  the  fountain  in 
the  park,  Mrs.  Campbell  expressed  the  su- 
preme unconsciousness  of  passion,  both  in 
face  and  voice,  as  no  other  English  actress 
could  have  done;  in  the  death  scene  she  ex- 
79 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

pressed  the  supreme  unconsciousness  of  in- 
nocence with  the  same  beauty  and  the  same 
intensity.  Her  palpitating  voice,  in  which 
there  is  something  like  the  throbbing  of  a 
wounded  bird,  seemed  to  speak  the  simple 
and  beautiful  words  as  if  they  had  never 
been  said  before.  And  that  beauty  and 
strangeness  in  her,  which  make  her  a  work  of 
art  in  herself,  seemed  to  find  the  one  perfect 
opportunity  for  their  expression.  The  only 
actress  on  our  stage  whom  we  go  to  see  as 
we  would  go  to  see  a  work  of  art,  she  acts 
Pinero  and  the  rest  as  if  under  a  disguise. 
Here,  dressed  in  wonderful  clothes  of  no 
period,  speaking  delicate,  almost  ghostly 
words,  she  is  herself,  her  rarer  self.  And 
Mr.  Martin  Harvey,  who  can  be  so  simple, 
so  passionate,  so  full  of  the  warmth  of 
charm,  seemed  until  almost  the  end  of  the 
play  to  have  lost  the  simple  fervour  which 
he  had  once  shown  in  the  part  of  Pelleas; 
he  posed,  spoke  without  sincerity,  was  con- 
scious of  little  but  his  attitudes.  But  in  the 
great  love  scene  by  the  fountain  in  the  park 
he  had  recovered  sincerity,  he  forgot  him- 

80 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

self,  remembering  Pelleas:  and  that  great 
love  scene  was  acted  with  a  sense  of  the  poe- 
try and  a  sense  of  the  human  reality  of  the 
thing,  as  no  one  on  the  London  stage  but 
Mr.  Harvey  and  Mrs.  Campbell  could  have 
acted  it.  No  one  else,  except  Mr.  Arliss  as 
the  old  servant,  was  good;  the  acting  was 
not  sufficiently  monotonous,  with  that  fine 
monotony  which  is  part  of  the  secret  of 
Maeterlinck.  These  busy  actors  occupied 
themselves  in  making  points,  instead  of  sub- 
mitting passively  to  the  passing  through 
them  of  profound  emotions,  and  the  be- 
trayal of  these  emotions  in  a  few,  reticent, 
and  almost  unwilling  words. 


ii.  "EVERYMAN" 


The  Elizabethan  Stage  Society's  perform- 
ance of  "  Everyman  "  deserves  a  place  of  its 
own  among  the  stage  performances  of  our 
time.  "  Everyman  "  took  one  into  a  kind  of 
very  human  church,  a  church  in  the  midst 
of  the  market-place,  like  those  churches  in 
Italy,  in  which  people  seem  so  much  at 
home.  The  verse  is  quaint,  homely,  not  so 

81 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

archaic  when  it  is  spoken  as  one  might  sup- 
pose in  reading  it;  the  metre  is  regular  in 
beat,  but  very  irregular  in  the  number  of 
syllables,  and  the  people  who  spoke  it  so 
admirably  under  Mr.  Peel's  careful  training 
had  not  been  trained  to  scan  it  as  well  as 
they  articulated  it.  "Everyman"  is  a 
kind  of  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  conceived 
with  a  daring  and  reverent  imagination, 
so  that  God  himself  comes  quite  natu- 
rally upon  the  stage,  and  speaks  out  of  a 
clothed  and  painted  image.  Death,  lean  and 
bare-boned,  rattles  his  drum  and  trips  fan- 
tastically across  the  stage  of  the  earth,  lead- 
ing his  dance ;  Everyman  is  seen  on  his  way 
to  the  grave,  taking  leave  of  Riches,  Fellow- 
ship, Kindred,  and  Goods  (each  personified 
with  his  attributes),  escorted  a  little  way  by 
Strength,  Discretion,  Beauty,  and  the  Five 
Wits,  and  then  abandoned  by  them,  and  then 
going  down  into  the  grave  with  no  other 
attendance  than  that  of  Knowledge  and 
Good  Deeds.  The  pathos  and  sincerity  of 
the  little  drama  were  shown  finely  and  ade- 
quately by  the  simple  cloths  and  bare  boards 

82 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

of  a  Shakespearean  stage,  and  by  the  solemn 
chanting  of  the  actors  and  their  serious,  un- 
spoilt simplicity  in  acting.  Miss  Wynne- 
Matthison  in  the  part  of  Everyman  acted 
with  remarkable  power  and  subtlety;  she 
had  the  complete  command  of  her  voice,  as 
so  few  actors  or  actresses  have,  and  she  was 
able  to  give  vocal  expression  to  every  shade 
of  meaning  which  she  had  apprehended. 

III.      fc  FAUST "   AT    THE   LYCEUM 

In  the  version  of  "Faust"  given  by  Irving 
at  the  Lyceum^  Wills  did  his  best  to  fol- 
low the  main  lines  of  Goethe's  construction. 
Unfortunately  he  was  less  satisfied  with 
Goethe's  verse,  though  it  happens  that  the 
verse  is  distinctly  better  than  the  construc- 
tion. He  kept  the  shell  and  threw  away  the 
kernel.  Faust  becomes  insignificant  in  this 
play  to  which  he  gives  his  name.  In  Goethe 
he  was  a  thinker,  even  more  than  a  poet. 
Here  he  speaks  bad  verse  full  of  emptiness. 
Even  where  Goethe's  words  are  followed,  in 
a  literal  translation,  the  meaning  seems  to 
have  gone  out  of  them;  they  are  displaced, 

83 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

they  no  longer  count  for  anything.  The 
Walpurgis  Night  is  stripped  of  all  its 
poetry,  and  Faust's  study  is  emptied  of  all 
its  wisdom.  The  Witches'  Kitchen  brews 
messes  without  magic,  lest  the  gallery  should 
be  bewildered.  The  part  of  Martha  is  ex- 
tended, in  order  that  his  red  livery  may  have 
its  full  "comic  relief."  Mephistopheles 
throws  away  a  good  part  of  his  cunning  wit, 
in  order  that  he  may  shock  no  prejudices  by 
seeming  to  be  cynical  with  seriousness,  and 
in  order  to  get  in  some  more  than  indifferent 
spectral  effect.  Margaret  is  to  be  seen  full 
length;  the  little  German  soubrette  does  her 
best  to  be  the  Helen  Faust  takes  her  for; 
and  we  are  meant  to  be  profoundly  inter- 
ested in  the  love-story.  "  Most  of  all,"  the 
programme  assures  us,  Wills  "  strove  to  tell 
the  love-story  in  a  manner  that  might  appeal 
to  an  English-speaking  audience." 

Now  if  you  take  the  philosophy  and  the 
poetry  out  of  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  and  leave 
the  rest,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  you  leave 
the  part  which  is  best  worth  having.  In 
writing  the  First  Part  of  "  Faust "  Goethe 

84 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

made  free  use  of  the  legend  of  Dr.  Faustus, 
not  always  improving  that  legend  where  he 
departed  from  it.  If  we  turn  to  Marlowe's 
"Dr.  Faustus"  we  shall  see,  embedded 
among  chaotic  fragments  of  mere  rubbish 
and  refuse,  the  outlines  of  a  far  finer,  a  far 
more  poetic,  conception  of  the  legend.  Mar- 
lowe's imagination  was  more  essentially  a 
poetic  imagination  than  Goethe's,  and  he  was 
capable,  at  moments,  of  more  satisfying  dra- 
matic effects.  When  his  Faustus  says  to 
Mephistopheles : 

One  thing,  good  servant,  let  me  crave  of  thee, 
To  glut  the  longing  of  my  heart's  desire: 
That  I  may  have  unto  my  paramour 
That  heavenly  Helen  which  I  saw  of  late; 

and  when,  his  prayer  being  granted,  he  cries: 

Was  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium? 

he  is  a  much  more  splendid  and  significant 
person  than  the  Faust  of  Goethe,  who  needs 
the  help  of  the  devil  and  of  an  old  woman  to 
seduce  a  young  girl  who  has  fallen  in  love 
with  him  at  first  sight.  Goethe,  it  is  true, 

85 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

made  what  amends  he  could  afterwards,  in 
the  Second  Part,  when  much  of  the  impulse 
had  gone  and  all  the  deliberation  in  the  world 
was  not  active  enough  to  replace  it.  Helen 
has  her  share,  among  other  abstractions,  but 
the  breath  has  not  returned  into  her  body, 
she  is  glacial,  a  talking  enigma,  to  whom 
Marlowe's  Faustus  would  never  have  said 
with  the  old  emphasis : 

And  none  but  thou  shalt  be  my  paramour  \ 

What  remains,  then,  in  Wills'  version,  is 
the  Gretchen  story,  in  all  its  detail,  a  spectac- 
ular representation  of  the  not  wholly  sincere 
witchcraft,  and  the  impressive  outer  shell  of 
Mephistopheles,  with,  in  Sir  Henry  Irving's 
pungent  and  acute  rendering,  something  of 
the  real  savour  of  the  denying  spirit.  Meph- 
istopheles is  the  modern  devil,  the  devil  of 
culture  and  polite  negation;  the  comrade,  in 
part  the  master,  of  Heine,  and  perhaps  the 
grandson  and  pupil  of  Voltaire.  On  the 
Lyceum  stage  he  is  the  one  person  of  dis- 
tinction, the  one  intelligence;  though  so 
many  of  his  best  words  have  been  taken 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

from  him,  it  is  with  a  fine  subtlety  that  he 
says  the  words  that  remain.  And  the  figure, 
with  its  lightness,  weary  grace,  alert  and 
uneasy  step,  solemnity,  grim  laughter,  re- 
mains with  one,  after  one  has  come  away  and 
forgotten  whether  he  told  us  all  that  Goethe 
confided  to  him. 

IV.      THE    JAPANESE    PLAYERS 

When  I  first  saw  the  Japanese  players  I 
suddenly  discovered  the  meaning  of  Jap- 
anese art,  so  far  as  it  represents  human 
beings.  You  know  the  scarcely  human  oval 
which  represents  a  woman's  face,  with  the 
help  of  a  few  thin  curves  for  eyelids  and 
mouth.  Well,  that  convention,  as  I  had  al- 
ways supposed  it  to  be,  that  geometrical 
symbol  of  a  face,  turns  out  to  be  precisely 
the  face  of  the  Japanese  woman  when  she 
is  made  up.  So  the  monstrous  entangle- 
ments of  men  fighting,  which  one  sees  in  the 
pictures,  the  circling  of  the  two-handed 
sword,  the  violence  of  feet  in  combat,  are 
seen  to  be  after  all  the  natural  manner 
of  Japanese  warfare.  This  unrestrained 

87 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

energy  of  body  comes  out  in  the  expres- 
sion of  every  motion.  Men  spit  and  sneeze 
and  snuffle,  without  consciousness  of  dignity 
or  hardly  of  humanity,  under  the  influence 
of  fear,  anger,  or  astonishment.  When  the 
merchant  is  awaiting  Shylock's  knife  he 
trembles  convulsively,  continuously,  from 
head  to  feet,  unconscious  of  everything  but 
death.  When  Shylock  has  been  thwarted, 
he  stands  puckering  his  face  into  a  thousand 
grimaces,  like  a  child  who  has  swallowed 
medicine.  It  is  the  emotion  of  children, 
naked  sensation,  not  yet  clothed  by  civilisa- 
tion. Only  the  body  speaks  in  it,  the  mind 
is  absent ;  and  the  body  abandons  itself  com- 
pletely to  the  animal  force  of  its  instincts. 
With  a  great  artist  like  Sada  Yacco  in  the 
death  scene  of  "The  Geisha  and  the 
Knight,"  the  effect  is  overwhelming;  the 
whole  woman  dies  before  one's  sight,  life 
ebbs  visibly  out  of  cheeks  and  eyes  and  lips; 
it  is  death  as  not  even  Sarah  Bernhardt  has 
shown  us  death.  There  are  moments,  at 
other  times  and  with  other  performers,  when 
it  is  difficult  not  to  laugh  at  some  cat-like 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

or  ape-like  trick  of  these  painted  puppets 
who  talk  a  toneless  language,  breathing 
through  their  words  as  they  whisper  or  chant 
them.  They  are  swathed  like  barbaric  idols, 
in  splendid  robes  without  grace ;  they  dance 
with  fans,  with  fingers,  running,  hopping, 
lifting  their  feet,  if  they  lift  them,  with  the 
heavy  delicacy  of  the  elephant ;  they  sing  in 
discords,  striking  or  plucking  a  few  hoarse 
notes  on  stringed  instruments,  and  beating 
on  untuned  drums.  Neither  they  nor  their 
clothes  have  beauty,  to  the  limited  Western 
taste;  they  have  strangeness,  the  charm  of 
something  which  seems  to  us  capricious,  al- 
most outside  Nature.  In  our  ignorance  of 
their  words,  of  what  they  mean  to  one  an- 
other, of  the  very  way  in  which  they  see  one 
another,  we  shall  best  appreciate  their  rarity 
by  looking  on  them  frankly  as  pictures, 
which  we  can  see  with  all  the  imperfections 
of  a  Western  misunderstanding. 

V.      THE     PARIS     MUSIC-HALL 

It  is  not  always  realised  by  Englishmen 
that  England  is  really  the  country  of  the 
music-hall,  the  only  country  where  it  has 

89 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

taken  firm  root  and  flowered  elegantly. 
There  is  nothing  in  any  part  of  Europe 
to  compare,  in  their  own  way,  with  the 
Empire  and  the  Alhambra,  either  as 
places  luxurious  in  themselves  or  as 
places  where  a  brilliant  spectacle  is  to 
be  seen.  It  is  true  that,  in  England,  the 
art  of  the  ballet  has  gone  down;  the  prima 
ballerina  assoluta  is  getting  rare,  the  primo 
uomo  is  extinct.  The  training  of  dancers  as 
dancers  leaves  more  and  more  to  be  desired, 
but  that  is  a  defect  which  we  share,  at  the 
present  time,  with  most  other  countries; 
while  the  beauty  of  the  spectacle,  with  us,  is 
unique.  Think  of  "Les  Papillons"  or  of 
"  Old  China "  at  the  Empire,  and  then  go 
and  see  a  fantastic  ballet  at  Paris,  at  Vienna, 
or  at  Berlin! 

And  it  is  not  only  in  regard  to  the  ballet, 
but  in  regard  also  to  the  "turns,"  that 
we  are  ahead  of  all  our  competitors.  I 
have  no  great  admiration  for  most  of  our 
comic  gentlemen  and  ladies  in  London,  but 
I  find  it  still  more  difficult  to  take  any 
interest  in  the  comic  gentlemen  and  ladies 

90 


Annotations  by  the  Way 

of  Paris.  Take  Marie  Lloyd,  for  instance, 
and  compare  with  her,  say,  Marguerite  De- 
val  at  the  Scala.  Both  aim  at  much  the  same 
effect,  but,  contrary  to  what  might  have 
been  expected,  it  is  the  Englishwoman  who 
shows  the  greater  finesse  in  the  rendering  of 
that  small  range  of  sensations  to  which  both 
give  themselves  up  frankly.  Take  Polin, 
who  is  supposed  to  express  vulgarities  with 
unusual  success.  Those  automatic  gestures, 
flapping  and  flopping;  that  dribbling  voice, 
without  intonation;  that  flabby  droop  and 
twitch  of  the  face ;  all  that  soapy  rubbing-in 
of  the  expressive  parts  of  the  song :  I  could 
see  no  skill  in  it  all,  of  a  sort  worth  having. 
The  women  here  sing  mainly  with  their 
shoulders,  for  which  they  seem  to  have  been 
chosen,  and  which  are  undoubtedly  ex- 
pressive. Often  they  do  not  even  take  the 
trouble  to  express  anything  with  voice  or 
face;  the  face  remains  blank,  the  voice  trots 
creakily.  It  is  a  doll  who  repeats  its  lesson, 
holding  itself  up  to  be  seen. 

The  French  "revue,"  as  one  sees  it  at  the 
Folies-Bergere,    done    somewhat    roughly 
91 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

and  sketchily,  strikes  one  most  of  all  by  its 
curious  want  of  consecution,  its  entire  re- 
liance on  the  point  of  this  or  that  scene,  cos- 
tume, or  performer.  It  has  no  plan,  no 
idea;  some  ideas  are  flung  into  it  in  passing; 
but  it  remains  as  shapeless  as  an  English 
pantomime,  and  not  much  more  interesting. 
Both  appeal  to  the  same  undeveloped  in- 
stincts, the  English  to  a  merely  childish 
vulgarity,  the  French  to  a  vulgarity  which 
is  more  frankly  vicious.  Really  I  hardly 
know  which  is  to  be  preferred.  In  England 
we  pretend  that  fancy  dress  is  all  in  the  in- 
terests of  morality ;  in  France  they  make  no 
such  pretence,  and,  in  dispensing  with  shoul- 
der-straps, do  but  make  their  intentions  a 
little  clearer.  Go  to  the  Moulin-Rouge  and 
you  will  see  a  still  clearer  object-lesson. 
The  goods  in  the  music-halls  are  displayed 
so  to  speak,  behind  glass,  in  a  shop  window; 
at  the  Moulin-Rouge  they  are  on  the  open 
booths  of  a  street  market. 


M.    CAPUS    IN    ENGLAND 

AN  excellent  Parisian  company  from 
the  Varietes  has  been  playing  "La 
Veine  "  of  M.  Alfred  Capus,  and  this  week 
it  is  playing  "  Les  Deux  Ecoles "  of  the 
same  entertaining  writer.  The  company  is 
led  by  Mme.  Jeanne  Granier,  an  actress 
who  could  not  be  better  in  her  own  way  un- 
less she  acquired  a  touch  of  genius,  and  she 
has  no  genius.  She  was  thoroughly  and 
consistently  good,  she  was  lifelike,  amusing, 
never  out  of  key;  only,  while  she  reminded 
one  at  times  of  Re  jane,  she  had  none  of  Re- 
jane's  magnetism,  none  of  Re  jane's  exciting 
naturalness. 

The  whole  company  is  one  of  excellent 
quality,  which  goes  together  like  the  dif- 
ferent parts  of  a  piece  of  machinery.  There 
is  Mme.  Marie  Magnier,  so  admirable  as 
an  old  lady  of  that  good,  easy-going,  intel- 
ligent, French  type.  There  is  Mile.  Laval- 

93 


Plays,,  Acting;  and  Music 

liere,  with  her  brilliant  eyes  and  her  little 
canaille  voice,  vulgarly  exquisite.  There  is 
M.  Numes,  M.  Guy,  M.  Guitry.  M.  Gui- 
try  is  the  French  equivalent  of  Mr.  Fred 
Kerr,  with  all  the  difference  that  that  change 
of  nationality  means.  His  slow  manner, 
his  delaying  pantomine,  his  hard,  persist- 
ent eyes,  his  uninflected  voice,  made  up  a 
type  which  I  have  never  seen  more  faith- 
fully presented  on  the  stage.  And  there  is 
M.  Brasseur.  He  is  a  kind  of  French  Ar- 
thur Roberts,  but  without  any  of  that  ex- 
travagant energy  which  carries  the  English 
comedian  triumphantly  through  all  his  ab- 
surdities. M.  Brasseur  is  preposterously 
natural,  full  of  aplomb  and  impertinence. 
He  never  flags,  never  hesitates;  it  is  im- 
possible to  take  him  seriously,  as  we  say  of 
delightful,  mischievous  people  in  real  life. 
I  have  been  amused  to  see  a  discussion  in 
the  papers  as  to  whether  "La  Veine"  is  a 
fit  play  to  be  presented  to  the  English  pub- 
lic. "  Max  "  has  defended  it  in  his  own  way 
in  the  Saturday  Review,  and  I  hasten  to  say 
that  I  quite  agree  with  his  defence.  Above 

94 


M.    Capus    in   England 

all,  I  agree  with  him  when  he  says:  "Let 
our  dramatic  critics  reserve  their  indigna- 
tion for  those  other  plays  in  which  the  char- 
acters are  self-conscious,  winkers  and  gig- 
glers  over  their  own  misconduct,  taking  us 
into  their  confidence,  and  inviting  us  to  wink 
and  giggle  with  them."  There,  certainly,  is 
the  offence;  there  is  a  kind  of  vulgarity 
which  seems  native  to  the  lower  English 
mind  and  to  the  lower  English  stage.  M. 
Capus  is  not  a  moralist,  but  it  is  not  needful 
to  be  a  moralist.  He  is  a  skilful  writer  for 
the  stage,  who  takes  an  amiable,  somewhat 
superficial,  quietly  humorous  view  of 
things,  and  he  takes  people  as  he  finds  them 
in  a  particular  section  of  the  upper  and 
lower  middle  classes  in  Paris,  not  going  fur- 
ther than  the  notion  which  they  have  of  them- 
selves, and  presenting  that  simply,  without 
comment.  We  get  a  foolish  young  million- 
aire and  a  foolish  young  person  in  a  flower 
shop,  who  take  up  a  collage  together  in  the 
most  casual  way  possible,  and  they  are  pre- 
sented as  two  very  ordinary  people,  neither 
better  nor  worse  than  a  great  many  other 

95 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ordinary  people,  who  do  or  do  not  do  much 
the  same  thing.  They  at  least  do  not  "  wink 
or  giggle  " ;  they  take  things  with  the  utmost 
simplicity,  and  they  call  upon  us  to  imitate 
their  bland  unconsciousness. 

"La  Veine"  is  a  study  of  luck,  in  the 
person  of  a  very  ordinary  man,  not  more 
intelligent  or  more  selfish  or  more  attrac- 
tive than  the  average,  but  one  who  knows 
when  to  take  the  luck  which  comes  his  way. 
The  few,  quite  average,  incidents  of  the  play 
are  put  together  with  neatness  and  proba- 
bility, and  without  sensational  effects,  or 
astonishing  curtains;  the  people  are  very 
natural  and  probable,  very  amusing  in  their 
humours,  and  they  often  say  humorous 
things,  not  in  so  many  set  words,  but  by  a 
clever  adjustment  of  natural  and  probable 
nothings.  Throughout  the  play  there  is  an 
amiable  and  entertaining  common  sense 
which  never  becomes  stage  convention ;  these 
people  talk  like  real  people,  only  much  more 
a-propos. 

In  "Les  Deux  Ecoles"  the  philosophy 
which  could  be  discerned  in  "  La  Veine,"  that 
96 


M.    Capus    in   England 

of  taking  things  as  they  are  and  taking 
them  comfortably,  is  carried  to  a  still  fur- 
ther development.  I  am  prepared  to  be  told 
that  the  whole  philosophy  is  horribly  im- 
moral ;  perhaps  it  is ;  but  the  play,  certainly, 
is  not.  It  is  vastly  amusing,  its  naughtiness 
is  so  naive,  so  tactfully  frank,  that  even  the 
American  daughter  might  take  her  mother 
to  see  it,  without  fear  of  corrupting  the  in- 
nocence of  age.  "  On  peut  tres  bien  vivre 
sans  etre  la  plus  heureuse  des  f  emmes  " :  that 
is  one  of  the  morals  of  the  piece;  and,  the 
more  you  think  over  questions  of  conduct, 
the  more  you  realise  that  you  might  just  as 
well  not  have  thought  about  them  at  all, 
might  be  another.  The  incidents  by  which 
these  excellent  morals  are  driven  home  are 
incidents  of  the  same  order  as  those  in  "  La 
Veine,"  and  not  less  entertaining.  The 
mounting,  simple  as  it  was,  was  admirably 
planned;  the  stage-pictures  full  of  explicit 
drollery.  And,  as  before,  the  whole  com- 
pany worked  with  the  effortless  unanimity 
of  a  perfect  piece  of  machinery. 

A  few  days  after  seeing  "  La  Veine  "  I 
97 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

went  to  Wyndham's  Theatre  to  see  a  revival 
of  Sir  Francis  Burnand's  "  Betsy."  "  Betsy," 
of  course,  is  adapted  from  the  French, 
though,  by  an  accepted  practice  which  seems 
to  me  dishonest,  in  spite  of  its  acceptance, 
that  fact  is  not  mentioned  on  the  play-bill. 
But  the  form  is  undoubtedly  English,  very 
English.  What  vulgarity,  what  pointless 
joking,  what  pitiable  attempts  to  serve  up 
old  impromptus  rechauffes!  I  found  it  im- 
possible to  stay  to  the  end.  Some  actors, 
capable  of  better  things,  worked  hard ;  there 
was  a  terrible  air  of  effort  in  these  attempts 
to  be  sprightly  in  fetters,  and  in  rusty  fet- 
ters. Think  of  "  La  Veine  "  at  its  worst,  and 
then  think  of  "Betsy"!  I  must  not  ask 
you  to  contrast  the  actors;  it  would  be  al- 
most unfair.  We  have  not  a  company  of 
comedians  in  England  who  can  be  compared 
for  a  moment  with  Mme.  Jeanne  Granier's 
company.  We  have  here  and  there  a  good 
actor,  a  brilliant  comic  actor,  in  one  kind  or 
another  of  emphatic  comedy;  but  wherever 
two  or  three  comedians  meet  on  the  Eng- 
lish stage,  they  immediately  begin  to  check- 

98 


M.    Capus   in   England 

mate,  or  to  outbid,  or  to  shout  down  one 
another.  No  one  is  content,  or  no  one  is 
able,  to  take  his  place  in  an  orchestra  in 
which  it  is  not  allotted  to  every  one  to  play 
a  solo. 


99 


A  DOUBLE   ENIGMA 

WHEN  it  was  announced  that  Mrs.  Tree 
was  to  give  a  translation  of  "L'Enigme" 
of  M.  Paul  Hervieu  at  Wyndham's  Theatre, 
the  play  was  announced  under  the  title 
"  Which? "  and  as  "  Which? "  it  appeared  on 
the  placards.  Suddenly  new  placards  ap- 
peared, with  a  new  title,  not  at  all  appropri- 
ate to  the  piece,  "  Caesar's  Wife."  Rumours 
of  a  late  decision,  or  indecision,  of  the  cen- 
sor were  heard.  The  play  had  not  been  pro- 
hibited, but  it  had  been  adapted  to  more 
polite  ears.  But  how?  That  was  the  ques- 
tion. I  confess  that  to  me  the  question 
seemed  insoluble.  Here  is  the  situation  as 
it  exists  in  the  play;  nothing  could  be  sim- 
pler, more  direct,  more  difficult  to  tamper 
with. 

Two  brothers,  Raymond  and  Gerard  de 
Gourgiran,    are    in    their    country    house, 
with  their  two  wives,  Giselle  and  Leonore, 
100 


A    Double   Enigma 

and  two  guests,  the  old  Marquis  de  Neste 
and  the  young  M.  de  Vivarce.  The  brothers 
surprise  Vivarce  on  the  stairs:  was  he  com- 
ing from  the  room  of  Giselle  or  of  Leonore? 
The  women  are  summoned ;  both  deny  every- 
thing; it  is  impossible  for  the  audience,  as 
for  the  husbands,  to  come  to  any  conclusion. 
A  shot  is  heard  outside:  Vivarce  has  killed 
himself,  so  that  he  may  save  the  reputation 
of  the  woman  he  loves.  Then  the  self-com- 
mand of  Leonore  gives  way;  she  avows  all 
in  a  piercing  shriek.  After  that  there  is 
some  unnecessary  moralising  ("La-bas  un 
cadavre!  Ici,  des  sanglots  de  captive!"  and 
the  like),  but  the  play  is  over. 

Now,  the  situation  is  perfectly  precise; 
it  is  not,  perhaps,  very  intellectually  signifi- 
cant, but  there  it  is,  a  striking  dramatic  situ- 
ation. Above  all,  it  is  frank;  there  are  no 
evasions,  no  sentimental  lies,  no  hypocrisies 
before  facts.  If  adultery  may  not  be  re- 
ferred to  on  the  English  stage  except  at  the 
Gaiety,  between  a  wink  and  a  laugh,  then 
such  a  play  becomes  wholly  impossible.  Not 
at  all:  listen.  We  are  told  to  suppose  that 
101 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

Vivarce  and  Leonore  have  had  a  possibly 
quite  harmless  flirtation;  and  instead  of  Vi- 
varce being  found  on  his  way  from  Leo- 
nore's  room,  he  has  merely  been  walking  with 
Leonore  in  the  garden :  at  midnight  remem- 
ber, and  after  her  husband  has  gone  to  bed. 
In  order  to  lead  up  to  this,  a  preposterous 
speech  has  been  put  into  the  mouth  of  the 
Marquis  de  Neste,  an  idiotic  rhapsody  about 
love  and  the  stars,  and  I  forget  what  else, 
which  I  imagine  we  are  to  take  as  an  indi- 
cation of  Vivarce's  sentiments  as  he  walks 
with  Leonore  in  the  garden  at  midnight. 
But  all  these  precautions  are  in  vain;  the 
audience  is  never  deceived  for  an  instant. 
A  form  of  words  has  been  used,  like  the  form 
of  words  by  which  certain  lies  become  techni- 
cally truthful.  The  whole  point  of  the  play : 
has  a  husband  the  right  to  kill  his  wife  or  his 
wife's  lover  if  he  discovers  that  his  wife 
has  been  unfaithful  to  him?  is  obviously  not 
a  question  of  whether  a  husband  may  kill 
a  gentleman  who  has  walked  with  his  wife 
in  the  garden,  even  after  midnight.  The 
force  of  the  original  situation  comes  pre- 
102 


A    Double   Enigma 

cisely  from  the  certainty  of  the  fact  and  the 
uncertainty  of  the  person  responsible  for  it. 
"  Caesar's  Wife  "  may  lend  her  name  for  a 
screen;  the  screen  is  no  disguise;  the  play 
remains  what  it  was  in  its  moral  bearing;  a 
dramatic  stupidity  has  been  imported  into 
it,  that  is  all.  Here,  then,  in  addition  to  the 
enigma  of  the  play  is  a  second,  not  so  easily 
explained,  enigma:  the  enigma  of  the  cen- 
sor, and  of  why  he  "  moves  in  a  mysterious 
way  his  wonders  to  perform."  The  play,  I 
must  confess,  does  not  seem  to  me,  as  it 
seems  to  certain  French  critics,  "une  piece 
qui  tient  du  chef-d'oeuvre  ...  la  tragedie 
des  maitres  antiques  et  de  Shakespeare."  To 
me  it  is  rather  an  insubstantial  kind  of  in- 
genuity, ingenuity  turning  in  a  circle.  As  a 
tragic  episode,  the  dramatisation  of  a  strik- 
ing incident,  it  has  force  and  simplicity,  the 
admirable  quality  of  directness.  Occasion- 
ally the  people  are  too  eager  to  express  the 
last  shade  of  the  author's  meaning,  as  in  the 
conversation  between  Neste  and  Vivarce, 
when  the  latter  decides  to  commit  suicide, 
or  in  the  supplementary  comments  when  the 

103 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

action  is  really  at  an  end.  But  I  have  never 
seen  a  piece  which  seemed  to  have  been  writ- 
ten so  kindly  and  so  consistently  for  the 
benefit  of  the  actors.  There  are  six  char- 
acters of  equal  importance;  and  each  in 
turn  absorbs  the  whole  flood  of  the  lime- 
light. 

The  other  piece  which  made  Saturday 
evening  interesting  was  a  version  of  "Au 
Telephone,"  one  of  Antoine's  recent  suc- 
cesses at  his  theatre  in  Paris.  It  was  brutal 
and  realistic,  it  made  just  the  appeal  of  an 
accident  really  seen,  and,  so  far  as  success 
in  horrifying  one  is  concerned,  it  was  suc- 
cessful. A  husband  hearing  the  voice  of  his 
wife  through  the  telephone,  at  the  moment 
when  some  murderous  ruffians  are  breaking 
into  the  house,  hearing  her  last  cry,  and  help- 
less to  aid  her,  is  as  ingeniously  unpleasant 
a  situation  as  can  well  be  imagined.  It  is 
brought  before  us  with  unquestionable  skill ; 
it  makes  us  as  uncomfortable  as  it  wishes 
to  make  us.  But  such  a  situation  has  ab- 
solutely no  artistic  value,  because  terror 
without  beauty  and  without  significance  is 

104 


A    Double   Enigma 

not  worth  causing.  When  the  hushand, 
with  his  ear  at  the  telephone,  hears  his  wife 
tell  him  that  some  one  is  forcing  the  win- 
dow-shutters with  a  crowbar,  we  feel,  it  is 
true,  a  certain  sympathetic  suspense;  but 
compare  this  crude  onslaught  on  the  nerves 
with  the  profound  and  delicious  terror  that 
we  experience  when,  in  "  La  Mort  de  Tinta- 
giles"  of  Maeterlinck,  an  invisible  force 
pushes  the  door  softly  open,  a  force  intangi- 
ble and  irresistible  as  death.  In  his  acting 
Mr.  Charles  Warner  was  powerful,  thrill- 
ing; it  would  be  difficult  to  say,  under  the 
circumstances,  that  he  was  extravagant,  for 
wrhat  extravagance,  under  the  circumstances, 
would  be  improbable?  He  had  not,  no 
doubt,  what  I  see  described  as  "le  jeu  sim- 
ple et  terrible  "  of  Antoine,  a  dry,  hard,  in- 
tellectual grip  on  horror;  he  had  the  ready 
abandonment  to  emotion  of  the  average 
emotional  man.  Mr.  Warner  has  an  irrita- 
ting voice  and  manner,  but  he  has  emotional 
power,  not  fine  nor  subtle,  but  genuine;  he 
feels  and  he  makes  you  feel.  He  has  the 
quality,  in  short,  of  the  play  itself,  but  a 

105 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

quality  more  tolerable  in  the  actor,  who  is 
concerned  only  with  the  rendering  of  a  given 
emotion,  than  in  the  playwright,  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  choose,  heighten,  and  dignify 
the  emotion  which  he  gives  to  him  to  render. 


106 


DRAMA 


PROFESSIONAL   AND   UNPRO- 
FESSIONAL 

LAST  week  gave  one  an  amusing  opportu- 
nity of  contrasting  the  merits  and  the  defects 
of  the  professional  and  the  unprofessional 
kind  of  play.  "  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  "  was 
revived  at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre,  and 
Mr.  Alexander  produced  at  the  St.  James's 
Theatre  a  play  called  "The  Finding  of 
Nancy,"  which  had  been  chosen  by  the  com- 
mittee of  the  Playgoers'  Club  out  of  a  large 
number  of  plays  sent  in  for  competition. 
The  writer,  Miss  Netta  Syrett,  has  pub- 
lished one  or  two  novels  or  collections  of 
stories;  but  this,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  is 
her  first  attempt  at  a  play.  Both  plays  were 
unusually  well  acted,  and  therefore  may  be 
contrasted  without  the  necessity  of  making 
allowances  for  the  way  in  which  each  was 
interpreted  on  the  stage. 

Mr.  Pinero  is  a  playwright  with  a  sharp 
sense  of  the  stage,  and  eye  for  what  is  tell- 

109 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ing,  a  cynical  intelligence  which  is  much 
more  interesting  than  the  uncertain  outlook 
of  most  of  our  playwrights.  He  has  no 
breadth  of  view,  but  he  has  a  clear  view;  he 
makes  his  choice  out  of  human  nature  de- 
liberately, and  he  deals  in  his  own  way  with 
the  materials  that  he  selects.  Before  saying 
to  himself:  what  would  this  particular  per- 
son say  or  do  in  these  circumstances?  he  says 
to  himself:  wjjat  would  it  be  effective  on 
the  stage  for  this  particular  person  to  do  or 
say?  He  suggests  nothing,  he  tells  you  all 
he  knows ;  he  cares  to  know  nothing  but  what 
immediately  concerns  the  purpose  of  his 
play.  The  existence  of  his  people  begins 
and  ends  with  their  first  and  "last  speech  on 
the  boards;  the  rest  is  silence,  because  he  can 
tell  you  nothing  about  it.  Sophy  Fullgar- 
ney  is  a  remarkably  effective  character  as 
a  stage-character,  but  when  the  play  is  over 
we  know  no  more  about  her  than  we  should 
know  about  her  if  we  had  spied  upon  her, 
in  her  own  way,  from  behind  some  bush  or 
keyhole.  We  have  seen  a  picturesque  and 
amusing  exterior,  and  that  is  all.  Lord 
no 


Professional   and   Unprofessional 

Quex  does  not,  I  suppose,  profess  to  be  even 
so  much  of  a  character  as  that,  and  the  other 
people  are  mere  "  humours,"  quite  amusing 
in  their  cleverly  contrasted  ways.  When 
these  people  talk,  they  talk  with  an  effort  to 
be  natural  and  another  effort  to  be  witty; 
they  are  never  sincere  and  without  self -con- 
sciousness; they  never  say  inevitable  things, 
only  things  that  are  effective  to  say.  And 
they  talk  in  poor  English.  Mr.  Pinero  has 
no  sense  of  style,  of  the  beauty  or  expres- 
siveness of  words.  His  joking  is  forced  and 
without  ideas ;  his  serious  writing  is  common. 
In  "  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  "  he  is  continually 
trying  to  impress  upon  his  audience  that  he 
is  very  audacious  and  distinctly  improper. 
The  improprieties  are  childish  in  the  inno- 
cence of  their  vulgarity,  and  the  audacities 
are  no  more  than  trifling  lapses  of  taste.  He 
shows  you  the  interior  of  a  Duchess's  bed- 
room, and  he  shows  you  the  Duchess's  gar- 
ter, in  a  box  of  other  curiosities.  He  sets 
his  gentlemen  and  ladies  talking  in  the  al- 
lusive style  which  you  may  overhear  when- 
ever you  happen  to  be  passing  a  group  of 
ill 


Plays,,  Acting.,  and  Music 

London  cabmen.  The  Duchess  has  writ- 
ten in  her  diary,  "  Warm  afternoon."  That 
means  that  she  has  spent  an  hour  with  her 
lover.  Many  people  in  the  audience  laugh. 
All  the  cabmen  would  have  laughed. 

Now  look  for  a  moment  at  the  play  by  the 
amateur  and  the  woman.  It  is  not  a  satis- 
factory play  as  a  whole,  it  is  not  very  inter- 
esting in  all  its  developments,  some  of  the 
best  opportunities  are  shirked,  some  of  the 
characters  (all  the  characters  who  are  men) 
are  poor.  But,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  well 
written.  Those  people  speak  a  language 
which  is  nearer  to  the  language  of  real  life 
than  that  used  by  Mr.  Pinero,  and  when  they 
make  jokes  there  is  generally  some  humour 
in  the  joke  and  some  intelligence  in  the 
humour.  They  have  ideas  and  they  have 
feelings.  The  ideas  and  the  feelings  are 
not  always  combined  with  faultless  logic 
into  a  perfectly  clear  and  coherent  present- 
ment of  character,  it  is  true.  But  from  time 
to  time  we  get  some  of  the  illusion  of  life. 
From  time  to  time  something  is  said  or  done 
which  we  know  to  be  profoundly  true.  A 

112 


Professional  and   Unprofessional 

woman  has  put  into  words  some  delicate  in- 
stinct of  a  woman's  soul.  Here  and  there 
is  a  cry  of  the  flesh,  here  and  there  a  cry  of 
the  mind,  which  is  genuine,  which  is  a  part 
of  life.  Miss  Syrett  has  much  to  learn  if 
she  is  to  become  a  successful  dramatist,  and 
she  has  not  as  yet  shown  that  she  knows 
men  as  well  as  women;  but  at  least  she  has 
begun  at  the  right  end.  She  has  begun  with 
human  nature  and  not  with  the  artifices  of 
the  stage,  she  has  thought  of  her  characters 
as  people  before  thinking  of  them  as  per- 
sons of  the  drama,  she  has  something  to  say 
through  them,  they  are  not  mere  lines  in  a 
pattern.  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  she  has  the 
makings  of  a  dramatist,  or  that  if  she  writes 
another  play  it  will  be  better  than  this  one. 
You  do  not  necessarily  get  to  your  destina- 
tion by  taking  the  right  turning  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  journey.  The  one  certain 
thing  is  that  if  you  take  the  wrong  turning 
at  the  beginning,  and  follow  it  persistently, 
you  will  not  get  to  your  destination  at  all. 
The  playwright  who  writes  merely  for  the 
stage,  who  squeezes  the  breath  out  of  life 
113 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

before  he  has  suited  it  to  his  purpose,  is  at 
the  best  only  playing  a  clever  game  with  us. 
He  may  amuse  us,  but  he  is  only  playing 
ping-pong  with  the  emotions.  And  that  is 
why  we  should  welcome,  I  think,  any  honest 
attempt  to  deal  with  life  as  it  is,  even  if 
life  as  it  is  does  not  always  come  into  the 
picture. 


TOLSTOI  AND   OTHERS 

THERE  is  little  material  for  the  stage  in  the 
novels  of  Tolstoi.  Those  novels  are  full, 
it  is  true,  of  drama;  but  they  cannot  be  con- 
densed into  dramas.  The  method  of  Tolstoi 
is  slow,  deliberate,  significantly  unemphatic; 
he  works  by  adding  detail  to  detail,  as  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  painter  adds  touch  to  touch. 
The  result  is,  in  a  sense,  monotonous,  and  it 
is  meant  to  be  monotonous.  Tolstoi  en- 
deavours to  give  us  something  more  nearly 
resembling  daily  life  than  any  one  has  yet 
given  us;  and  in  daily  life  the  moment  of 
spiritual  crisis  is  rarely  the  moment  in 
which  external  action  takes  part.  In  the 
drama  we  can  only  properly  realise  the  soul's 
action  through  some  corresponding  or  con- 
sequent action  which  takes  place  visibly  be- 
fore us.  You  will  find,  throughout  Tolstoi's 
work,  many  striking  single  scenes,  but  never, 
I  think,  a  scene  which  can  bear  detachment 
from  that  network  of  detail  which  has  led 

115 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

up  to  it  and  which  is  to  come  out  of  it.  Often 
the  scene  which  most  profoundly  impresses 
one  is  a  scene  trifling  in  itself,  and  owing 
its  impressiveness  partly  to  that  very  quality. 
Take,  for  instance,  in  "  Resurrection,"  Book 
II.,  chapter  xxviiii.,  the  scene  in  the  theatre 
"  during  the  second  act  of  the  eternal '  Dame 
aux  Camelias,'  in  which  a  foreign  actress 
once  again,  and  in  a  novel  manner,  showed 
how  women  died  of  consumption."  The 
General's  wife,  Mariette,  smiles  at  Nekhlud- 
off  in  the  box,  and,  outside,  in  the  street,  an- 
other woman,  the  other  "  half -world,"  smiles 
at  him,  just  in  the  same  way.  That  is  all,  but 
to  Nekhludoff  it  is  one  of  the  great  crises 
of  his  life.  He  has  seen  something,  for  the 
first  time,  in  what  he  now  feels  to  be  its  true 
light,  and  he  sees  it  "  as  clearly  as  he  saw  the 
palace,  the  sentinels,  the  fortress,  the  river, 
the  boats  and  the  Stock  Exchange.  And 
just  as  on  this  northern  summer  night  there 
was  no  restful  darkness  on  the  earth,  but 
only  a  dismal,  dull  light  coming  from  an 
invisible  source,  so  in  Nekhludoff 's  soul  there 
was  no  longer  the  restful  darkness,  igno- 
116 


Tolstoi  and  Others 

ranee."  The  chapter  is  profoundly  impres- 
sive; it  is  one  of  those  chapters  which  no 
one  but  Tolstoi  has  ever  written.  Imagine 
it  transposed  to  the  stage,  if  that  were  pos- 
sible, and  the  inevitable  disappearance  of 
everything  that  gives  it  meaning ! 

In  Tolstoi  the  story  never  exists  for  its 
own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  a  very  definite 
moral  idea.  Even  in  his  later  novels  Tolstoi 
is  not  a  preacher;  he  gives  us  an  interpreta- 
tion of  life,  not  a  theorising  about  life.  But, 
to  him,  the  moral  idea  is  almost  everything, 
and  (what  is  of  more  consequence)  it  gives 
a  great  part  of  its  value  to  his  "realism" 
of  prisons  and  brothels  and  police  courts. 
In  all  forms  of  art,  the  point  of  view  is  of 
more  importance  than  the  subject-matter. 
It  is  as  essential  for  the  novelist  to  get  the 
right  focus  as  it  is  for  the  painter.  In  a 
page  of  Zola  and  in  a  page  of  Tolstoi  you 
might  find  the  same  gutter  described  with 
the  same  minuteness;  and  yet  in  reading  the 
one  you  might  see  only  the  filth,  while  in 
reading  the  other  you  might  feel  only  some 
fine  human  impulse.  Tolstoi  "sees  life 
117 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

steadily"  because  he  sees  it  under  a  divine 
light;  he  has  a  saintly  patience  with  evil,  and 
so  becomes  a  casuist  through  sympathy,  a 
psychologist  out  of  that  pity  which  is  under- 
standing. And  then,  it  is  as  a  direct  conse- 
quence of  this  point  of  view,  in  the  mere 
process  of  unravelling  things,  that  his  great- 
est skill  is  shown  as  a  novelist.  He  does  not 
exactly  write  well;  he  is  satisfied  if  his  words 
express  their  meaning,  and  no  more;  his 
words  have  neither  beauty  nor  subtlety  in 
themselves.  But,  if  you  will  only  give  him 
time,  for  he  needs  time,  he  will  creep  closer 
and  closer  up  to  some  doubtful  and  remote 
truth,  not  knowing  itself  for  what  it  is :  he 
will  reveal  the  soul  to  itself,  like  "God's 

spy." 

If  you  want  to  know  How  daily  life  goes 
on  among  people  who  know  as  little  about 
themselves  as  you  know  about  your  neigh- 
bours in  a  street  or  drawing-room,  read  Jane 
Austen,  and,  on  that  level,  you  will  be  per- 
fectly satisfied.  But  if  you  want  to  know 
why  these  people  are  happy  or  unhappy, 
why  the  thing  which  they  do  deliberately  is 

118 


Tolstoi   and   Others 

not  the  thing  which  they  either  want  or  ought 
to  do,  read  Tolstoi;  and  I  can  hardly  add 
that  you  will  be  satisfied.  I  never  read  Tol- 
stoi without  a  certain  suspense,  sometimes  a 
certain  terror.  An  accusing  spirit  seems  to 
peer  between  every  line ;  I  can  never  tell  what 
new  disease  of  the  soul  those  pitying  and 
unswerving  eyes  may  not  have  discovered. 
Such,  then,  is  a  novel  of  Tolstoi;  such, 
more  than  almost  any  of  his  novels,  is  "  Res- 
urrection," the  masterpiece  of  his  old  age, 
into  which  he  has  put  an  art  but  little  less 
consummate  than  that  of  "  Anna  Karenina," 
together  with  the  finer  spirit  of  his  later 
gospel.  Out  of  this  novel  a  play  in  French 
was  put  together  by  M.  Henry  Bataille  and 
produced  at  the  Odeon.  Now  M.  Bataille 
is  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  original 
dramatists  of  our  time.  A  play  in  English, 
said  to  be  by  MM.  Henry  Bataille  and 
Michael  Morton,  has  been  produced  by  Mr. 
Tree  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre;  and  the 
play  is  called,  as  the  French  play  was  called, 
Tolstoi's  "Resurrection."  What  Mr.  Mor- 
ton has  done  with  M.  Bataille  I  cannot 
119 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

say.  I  have  read  in  a  capable  French  paper 
that  "  Ton  est  heureux  d'avoir  pu  applaudir 
une  oeuvre  vraiment  noble,  vraiment  pure," 
in  the  play  of  M.  Bataille;  and  I  believe  it. 
Are  those  quite  the  words  one  would  use 
about  the  play  in  English? 

They  are  not  quite  the  words  I  would  use 
about  the  play  in  English.  It  is  a  melodrama 
with  one  good  scene,  the  scene  in  the  prison ; 
and  this  is  good  only  to  a  certain  point. 
There  is  another  scene  which  is  amusing,  the 
scene  of  the  jury,  but  the  humour  is  little 
more  than  clowning,  and  the  tragic  note, 
which  should  strike  through  it,  is  only  there 
in  a  parody  of  itself.  Indeed  the  word  par- 
ody is  the  only  word  which  can  be  used  about 
the  greater  part  of  the  play,  and  it  seems  to 
me  a  pity  that  the  name  of  Tolstoi  should 
be  brought  into  such  dangerous  companion- 
ship with  the  vulgarities  and  sentimentalities 
of  the  London  stage.  I  heard  people  around 
me  confessing  that  they  had  not  read  the 
book.  How  terrible  must  have  been  the  dis- 
illusion of  those  people,  if  they  had  ever  ex- 
pected anything  of  Tolstoi,  and  if  they 

120 


Tolstoi  and   Others 

really  believed  that  this  demagogue  Prince, 
who  stands  in  nice  poses  in  the  middle  of 
drawing-rooms  and  of  prison  cells,  talking 
nonsense  with  a  convincing  disbelief,  was  in 
any  sense  a  mouthpiece  for  Tolstoi's  poor 
simple  little  gospel.  Tolstoi  according  to 
Captain  Marshall,  I  should  be  inclined  to 
define  him;  but  I  must  give  Mr.  Tree  his 
full  credit  in  the  matter.  When  he  crucifies 
himself,  so  to  speak,  symbolically,  across 
the  door  of  the  jury-room,  remarking  in  his 
slowest  manner:  "The  bird  flutters  no 
longer;  I  must  atone,  I  must  atone! "  one  is, 
in  every  sense,  alone  with  the  actor.  Mr. 
Tree  has  many  arts,  but  he  has  not  the  art 
of  sincerity.  His  conception  of  acting  is, 
literally,  to  act,  on  every  occasion.  Even  in 
the  prison  scene,  in  which  Miss  Ashwell  is 
so  good,  until  she  begins  to  shout  and  he  to 
rant,  "  and  then  the  care  is  over,"  Mr.  Tree 
cannot  be  his  part  without  acting  it. 

That  prison  scene  is,  on  the  whole,  well 

done,  and  the  first  part  of  it,  when  the 

women  shout  and  drink  and  quarrel,  is  acted 

with  a  satisfying  sense  of  vulgarity  which 

121 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

contrasts  singularly  with  what  is  meant  to  be 
a  suggestion  of  the  manners  of  society  in 
St.  Petersburg  in  the  scene  preceding.  Per- 
haps the  most  lamentable  thing  in  the  play  is 
the  first  act.  This  act  takes  the  place  of 
those  astounding  chapters  in  the  novel  in 
which  the  seduction  of  Katusha  is  described 
with  a  truth,  tact,  frankness,  and  subtlety 
unparalleled  in  any  novel  I  have  ever  read. 
I  read  them  over  before  I  went  to  the 
theatre,  and  when  I  got  to  the  theatre  I 
found  a  scene  before  me  which  was  not  Tol- 
stoi's scene,  a  foolish,  sentimental  conversa- 
tion in  which  I  recognised  hardly  more  than 
a  sentence  of  Tolstoi  (and  this  brought  in 
in  the  wrong  place),  and,  in  short,  the  old 
make-believe  of  all  the  hack-writers  for  the 
stage,  dished  up  again,  and  put  before  us, 
with  a  simplicity  of  audacity  at  which  one 
can  only  marvel  ( "  a  thing  imagination  bog- 
gles at ") ,  as  an  "  adaptation  "  from  Tolstoi. 
Tolstoi  has  been  hardly  treated  by  some 
translators  and  by  many  critics;  in  his  own 
country,  if  you  mention  his  name,  you  are  as 
likely  as  not  to  be  met  by  a  shrug  and  an 
122 


Tolstoi  and  Others 

"  Ah,  monsieur,  il  divague  un  peu ! "  In  his 
own  country  he  has  the  censor  always  against 
him;  some  of  his  books  he  has  never  been 
able  to  print  in  full  in  Russian.  But  in  the 
new  play  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre  we  have, 
in  what  is  boldly  called  Tolstoi's  "  Resurrec- 
tion," something  which  is  not  Tolstoi  at  all. 
There  is  M.  Bataille,  who  is  a  poet  of  nature 
and  a  dramatist  who  has  created  a  new  form 
of  drama:  let  him  be  exonerated.  Mr.  Mor- 
ton and  Mr.  Tree  between  them  may  have 
been  the  spoilers  of  M.  Bataille ;  but  Tolstoi, 
might  not  the  great  name  of  Tolstoi  have 
been  left  well  alone? 


123 


SOME  PROBLEM  PLAYS 

i.   "THE  MARRYING  OF  ANN  LEETE" 

IT  was  for  the  production  of  such  plays  as 
Mr.  Granville  Barker's  that  the  Stage  So- 
ciety was  founded,  and  it  is  doing  good  serv- 
ice to  the  drama  in  producing  them.  "  The 
Marrying  of  Ann  Leete  "  is  the  cleverest 
and  most  promising  new  play  that  I  have 
seen  for  a  long  time;  but  it  cannot  be  said 
to  have  succeeded  even  with  the  Stage  So- 
ciety audience,  and  no  ordinary  theatrical 
manager  is  very  likely  to  produce  it.  The 
author,  it  is  true,  is  an  actor,  but  he  is 
young;  his  play  is  immature,  too  crowded 
with  people,  too  knotted  up  with  motives, 
too  inconclusive  in  effect.  He  knows 
the  stage,  and  his  knowledge  has  en- 
abled him  to  use  the  stage  for  his  own  pur- 
poses, inventing  a  kind  of  technique  of  his 
own,  doing  one  or  two  things  which  have 
never,  or  never  so  deftly,  been  done  before. 
But  he  is  something  besides  all  that;  he  can 

124 


Some  Problem  Plays 

think,  he  can  write,  and  he  can  suggest  real 
men  and  women.  The  play  opens  in  the 
dark,  and  remains  for  some  time  brilliantly 
ambiguous.  People,  late  eighteenth-century 
people,  talk  with  bewildering  abruptness, 
not  less  bewildering  point;  they,  their  mo- 
tives, their  characters,  swim  slowly  into  day- 
light. Some  of  the  dialogue  is,  as  the  writer 
says  of  politics,  "  a  game  for  clever  children, 
women,  and  fools  " ;  it  is  a  game  demanding 
close  attention.  A  courtly  indolence,  an  in- 
tellectual blackguardism,  is  in  the  air ;  people 
walk,  as  it  seems,  aimlessly  in  and  out,  and 
the  game  goes  on ;  it  fills  one  with  excitement, 
the  excitement  of  following  a  trail.  It  is  a 
trail  of  ideas,  these  people  think,  and  they 
act  because  they  have  thought.  They  know 
the  words  they  use,  they  use  them  with  delib- 
eration, their  hearts  are  in  their  words. 
Their  actions,  indeed,  are  disconcerting ;  but 
these  people,  and  their  disconcerting  actions, 
are  interesting,  holding  one's  mind  in  sus- 
pense. 

Mr.  Granville  Barker  has  tried  to  tell  the 
whole  history  of  a  family,  and  he  interests 

123 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

us  in  every  member  of  that  family.  He  plays 
them  like  chessmen,  and  their  moves  excite 
us  as  chess  excites  the  mind.  They  express 
ideas ;  the  writer  has  thought  out  their  place 
in  the  scheme  of  things,  and  he  has  put  his 
own  faculty  of  thinking  into  their  heads. 
They  talk  for  effect,  or  rather  for  disguise; 
it  is  part  of  their  keen  sense  of  the  game. 
They  talk  at  cross-purposes,  as  they  wander 
in  and  out  of  the  garden  terrace;  they  plan 
out  their  lives,  and  life  comes  and  surprises 
them  by  the  way.  Then  they  speak  straight 
out  of  their  hearts,  sometimes  crudely,  some- 
times with  a  naivete  which  seems  laughable; 
and  they  act  on  sudden  impulses,  accepting 
the  consequences  when  they  come.  They  live 
an  artificial  life,  knowing  lies  to  be  lies,  and 
choosing  them;  they  are  civilised,  they  try 
to  do  their  duty  by  society;  only,  at  every 
moment,  some  ugly  gap  opens  in  the  earth, 
right  in  their  path,  and  they  have  to  stop, 
consider,  choose  a  new  direction.  They  seem 
to  go  their  own  way,  almost  without  guid- 
ing; and  indeed  may  have  escaped  almost  lit- 
erally out  of  their  author's  hands.  The  last 

126 


Some  Problem  Plays 

scene  is  an  admirable  episode,  a  new  thing 
on  the  stage,  full  of  truth  within  its  own 
limits ;  but  it  is  an  episode,  not  a  conclusion, 
much  less  a  solution.  Mr.  Barker  can  write: 
he  writes  in  short,  sharp  sentences,  which  go 
off  like  pistol-shots,  and  he  keeps  up  the 
firing,  from  every  corner  of  the  stage.  He 
brings  his  people  on  and  off  with  an  uncon- 
ventionality  which  comes  of  knowing  the  re- 
sources of  the  theatre,  and  of  being  unfet- 
tered by  the  traditions  of  its  technique.  The 
scene  with  the  gardener  in  the  second  act  has 
extraordinary  technical  merit,  and  it  has  the 
art  which  conceals  its  art.  There  are  other 
inventions  in  the  play,  not  all  quite  so  con- 
vincing. Sometimes  Mr.  Barker,  in  doing 
the  right  or  the  clever  thing,  does  it  just  not 
quite  strongly  enough  to  carry  it  against 
opposition.  The  opposition  is  the  firm  and 
narrow  mind  of  the  British  playgoer.  Such 
plays  as  Mr.  Barker's  are  apt  to  annoy  with- 
out crushing.  The  artist,  who  is  yet  an  im- 
perfect artist,  bewilders  the  world  with  what 
is  novel  in  his  art ;  the  great  artist  convinces 
the  world.  Mr.  Barker  is  young:  he  will 
127 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

come  to  think  with  more  depth  and  less  tu- 
mult; he  will  come  to  work  with  less  prodi- 
gality and  more  mastery  of  means.  But  he 
has  energy  already,  and  a  sense  of  what  is 
absurd  and  honest  in  the  spectacle  of  this 
game,  in  which  the  pawns  seem  to  move 
themselves. 

ii.  "THE  LADY  FROM  THE  SEA" 
On  seeing  the  Stage  Society's  perform- 
ance of  Ibsen's  "Lady  from  the  Sea,"  I 
found  myself  wondering  whether  Ibsen  is 
always  so  unerring  in  his  stagecraft  as  one 
is  inclined  to  assume,  and  whether  there  are 
not  things  in  his  plays  which  exist  more 
satisfactorily,  are  easier  to  believe  in,  in  the 
book  than  on  the  stage.  Does  not  the  play, 
for  instance,  lose  a  little  in  its  acceptance 
of  those  narrow  limits  of  the  foot- 
lights? That  is  the  question  which  I  was 
asking  myself  as  I  saw  the  performance 
of  the  Stage  Society.  The  play  is,  accord- 
ing to  the  phrase,  a  problem-play,  but 
the  problem  is  the  problem  of  all  Ibsen's 

128 


Some  Problem  Plays 

plays:  the  desire  of  life,  the  attraction  of 
life,  the  mystery  of  life.  Only,  we  see  the 
eternal  question  under  a  new,  strange  aspect. 
The  sea  calls  to  the  blood  of  this  woman, 
who  has  married  into  an  inland  home;  and 
the  sea-cry,  which  is  the  desire  of  more 
abundant  life,  of  unlimited  freedom,  of  an 
unknown  ecstasy,  takes  form  in  a  vague 
Stranger,  who  has  talked  to  her  of  the  sea- 
birds  in  a  voice  like  their  own,  and  whose 
eyes  seem  to  her  to  have  the  green  changes 
of  the  sea.  It  is  an  admirable  symbol,  but 
when  a  bearded  gentleman  with  a  knapsack 
on  his  back  climbs  over  the  garden  wall  and 
says :  "I  have  come  for  you ;  are  you  com- 
ing?" and  then  tells  the  woman  that  he  has 
read  of  her  marriage  in  the  newspaper,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  symbol  had  lost  a  good 
deal  of  its  meaning  in  the  gross  act  of  taking 
flesh.  The  play  haunts  one,  as  it  is,  but  it 
would  have  haunted  one  with  a  more  subtle 
witchcraft  if  the  Stranger  had  never  ap- 
peared upon  the  stage.  Just  as  Wagner 
insisted  upon  a  crawling  and  howling 
dragon,  a  Fafner  with  a  name  of  his  own 
129 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

and  a  considerable  presence,  so  Ibsen  brings 
the  supernatural  or  the  subconscious  a  little 
crudely  into  the  midst  of  his  persons  of  the 
drama.  To  use  symbol,  and  not  to  use  it  in 
the  surprising  and  inevitable  way  of  the 
poet,  is  to  fall  into  the  dry,  impotent  sin 
of  allegory. 

in.    "THE   NEW    IDOI/' 

It  was  an  interesting  experiment  on  the 
part  of  the  Stage  Society  to  give  a  transla- 
lation  of  "  La  Nouvelle  Idole,"  one  of  those 
pieces  by  which  M.  Francois  de  Curel  has 
reached  that  very  actual  section  of  the 
French  public  which  is  interested  in  ideas. 
"  The  New  Idol "  is  a  modern  play  of  the 
most  characteristically  modern  type ;  its  sub- 
ject-matter  is  largely  medical,  it  deals  with 
the  treatment  of  cancer;  we  are  shown 
a  doctor's  laboratory,  with  a  horrible  elon- 
gated diagram  of  the  inside  of  the  human 
body;  a  young  girl's  lungs  are  sounded 
in  the  doctor's  drawing-room;  nearly  every 
character  talks  science  and  very  little  but 
science.  When  they  cease  talking  science, 

130 


Some  Problem  Plays 

which  they  talk  well,  with  earnestness 
and  with  knowledge,  and  try  to  talk 
love  or  intrigue,  they  talk  badly,  as  if 
they  were  talking  of  things  which  they  knew 
nothing  about.  Now,  personally,  this  kind 
of  talk  does  not  interest  me;  it  makes  me 
feel  uncomfortable.  But  I  am  ready  to 
admit  that  it  is  justified  if  I  find  that  the 
dramatic  movement  of  the  play  requires  it, 
that  it  is  itself  an  essential  part  of  the  action. 
In  "The  New  Idol"  I  think  this  is  partly 
the  case.  The  other  medical  play  which 
has  lately  been  disturbing  Paris,  "Les 
A  varies,"  does  not  seem  to  me  to  fulfil  this 
condition  at  any  moment:  it  is  a  pamphlet 
from  begining  to  end,  it  is  not  a  satisfactory 
pamphlet,  and  it  has  no  other  excuse  for  ex- 
istence. But  M.  de  Curel  has  woven  his 
problem  into  at  least  a  semblance  of  action; 
the  play  is  not  a  mere  discussion  of  irresis- 
tible physical  laws;  the  will  enters  into  the 
problem,  and  will  fights  against  will,  and 
against  not  quite  irresistible  physical  laws. 
The  suggestion  of  love  interests,  which  come 
to  nothing,  and  have  no  real  bearing  on  the 

131 


flays,  Acting,  and  Music 

main  situation,  seems  to  me  a  mistake;  it 
complicates  things,  things  which  must  ap- 
pear to  us  so  very  real  if  we  are  to  accept 
them  at  all,  with  rather  a  theatrical  kind  of 
complication.  M.  de  Cur  el  is  more  a  thinker 
than  a  dramatist,  as  he  has  shown  lately  in 
the  very  original,  interesting,  impossible 
"  Fille  Sauvage."  He  grapples  with  serious 
matters  seriously,  and  he  argues  well,  with  a 
closely  woven  structure  of  arguments ;  some 
of  them  bringing  a  kind  of  hard  and  naked 
poetry  out  of  mere  closeness  of  thinking  and 
closeness  of  seeing.  In  "  The  New  Idol " 
there  is  some  dialogue,  real  dialogue,  natural 
give-and-take,  about  the  fear  of  death  and 
the  horror  of  indestructibility  (a  variation 
on  one  of  the  finest  of  Coventry  Patmore's 
odes)  which  seemed  to  me  admirable:  it  held 
the  audience  because  it  was  direct  speech, 
expressing  a  universal  human  feeling  in  the 
light  of  a  vivid  individual  crisis.  But  such 
writing  as  this  was  rare;  for  the  most  part 
it  was  the  problem  itself  which  insisted  on 
occupying  our  attention,  or,  distinct  from 
this,  the  too  theatrical  characters. 

132 


Some  Problem  Plays 

iv.    "MRS.    WARREN'S   PROFESSION" 

The  Stage  Society  has  shown  the  courage 
of  its  opinions  by  giving  an  unlicensed  play, 
"Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,"  one  of  the 
"unpleasant  plays  "  of  Mr.  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  at  the  theatre  of  the  New  Lyric 
Club.  It  was  well  acted,  with  the  exception 
of  two  of  the  characters,  and  the  part  of 
Mrs.  Warren  was  played  by  Miss  Fanny 
Brough,  one  of  the  cleverest  actresses  on 
the  English  stage,  with  remarkable  ability. 
The  action  was  a  little  cramped  by  the  small- 
ness  of  the  stage,  but,  for  all  that,  the  play 
was  seen  under  quite  fair  conditions,  condi- 
tions under  which  it  could  be  judged  as  an 
acting  play  and  as  a  work  of  art.  It  is 
brilliantly  clever,  with  a  close,  detective 
cleverness,  all  made  up  of  merciless  logic 
and  unanswerable  common  sense.  The  prin- 
cipal characters  are  well  drawn,  the  scenes 
are  constructed  with  a  great  deal  of  theatri- 
cal skill,  the  dialogue  is  telling,  the  interest 
is  held  throughout.  To  say  that  the  char- 
acters, without  exception,  are  ugly  in  their 

133 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

vice  and  ugly  in  their  virtue;  that  they  all 
have,  men  and  women,  something  of  the  cad 
in  them;  that  their  language  is  the  language 
of  vulgar  persons,  is,  perhaps,  only  to  say 
that  Mr.  Shaw  has  chosen,  for  artistic  rea- 
sons, to  represent  such  people  just  as  they 
are.  But  there  is  something  more  to  be  said. 
"Mrs.  Warren's  Profession"  is  not  a  rep- 
resentation of  life;  it  is  a  discussion  about 
life.  Now,  discussion  on  the  stage  may  be 
interesting.  Why  not?  Discussion  is  the 
most  interesting  thing  in  the  world,  off  the 
stage;  it  is  the  only  thing  that  makes  an  hour 
pass  vividly  in  society;  but  when  discussion 
ends  art  has  not  begun.  It  is  interesting  to 
see  a  sculptor  handling  bits  of  clay,  sticking 
them  on  here,  scraping  them  off  there;  but 
that  is  only  the  interest  of  a  process.  When 
he  has  finished  I  will  consider  whether  his 
figure  is  well  or  ill  done;  until  he  has  finished 
I  can  have  no  opinion  about  it.  It  is  the 
same  thing  with  discussion  on  the  stage. 
The  subject  of  Mr.  Shaw's  discussion  is 
what  is  called  a  "nasty"  one.  That  is 
neither  here  nor  there,  though  it  may  be 


Some  Problem  Plays 

pointed  out  that  there  is  no  essential  differ- 
ence between  the  problem  that  he  discusses 
and  the  problem  that  is  at  the  root  of  "  The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray." 

But  Mr.  Shaw,  I  believe,  is  never  without 
his  polemical  intentions,  and  I  should  like, 
for  a  moment,  to  ask  whether  his  discussion 
of  his  problem,  taken  on  its  own  merits,  is 
altogether  the  best  way  to  discuss  things. 
Mr.  Shaw  has  an  ideal  of  life:  he  asks  that 
men  and  women  should  be  perfectly  reason- 
able, that  they  should  clear  their  minds  of 
cant,  and  speak  out  everything  that  is  in 
their  minds.  He  asks  for  cold  and  clear 
logic,  and  when  he  talks  about  right  and 
wrong  he  is  really  talking  about  right  and 
wrong  logic.  Now,  logic  is  not  the  main- 
spring of  every  action,  nor  is  justice  only  the 
inevitable  working  out  of  an  equation.  Hu- 
manity, as  Mr.  Shaw  sees  it,  moves  like 
clockwork ;  and  must  be  regulated  as  a  watch 
is,  and  praised  or  blamed  simply  in  propor- 
tion to  its  exactitude  in  keeping  time.  Hu- 
manity, as  Mr.  Shaw  knows,  does  not  move 
by  clockwork,  and  the  ultimate  justice  will 

135 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

have  to  take  count  of  more  exceptions  and 
irregularities  than  Mr.  Shaw  takes  count  of. 
There  is  a  great  living  writer  who  has 
brought  to  bear  on  human  problems  as  con- 
sistent a  logic  as  Mr.  Shaw's,  together  with 
something  which  Mr.  Shaw  disdains.  Mr. 
Shaw's  logic  is  sterile,  because  it  is  without 
sense  of  touch,  sense  of  sight,  or  sense  of 
hearing;  once  set  going  it  is  warranted  to 
go  straight,  and  to  go  through  every  obsta- 
cle. Tolstoi's  logic  is  fruitful,  because  it 
allows  for  human  weakness,  because  it  un- 
derstands, and  because  to  understand  is, 
among  other  things,  to  pardon.  In  a  word, 
the  difference  between  the  spirit  of  Tolstoi 
and  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Shaw  is  the  difference 
between  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  the  spirit  of 
Euclid. 


136 


"MONNA    VANNA" 

IN  his  earlier  plays  Maeterlinck  invented  a 
world  of  his  own,  which  was  a  sort  of  pro- 
jection into  space  of  the  world  of  nursery 
legends  and  of  childish  romances.  It  was  at 
once  very  abstract  and  very  local.  There 
was  a  castle  by  the  sea,  a  "  well  at  the  world's 
end,"  a  pool  in  a  forest;  princesses  with 
names  out  of  the  "Morte  d' Arthur"  lost 
crowns  of  gold;  and  blind  beggars  without  a 
name  wandered  in  the  darkness  of  eternal 
terror.  Death  was  always  the  scene-shifter  of 
the  play,  and  destiny  the  stage-manager. 
The  people  who  came  and  went  had  the 
blind  gestures  of  marionettes,  and  one  pitied 
their  helplessness.  Pity  and  terror  had  in- 
deed gone  to  the  making  of  this  drama,  in  a 
sense  much  more  literal  than  Aristotle's. 

In  all  these  plays  there  were  few  words 
and  many  silences,  and  the  words  were  am- 
biguous, hesitating,  often  repeated,  like  the 
137 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

words  of  peasants  or  children.  They  were 
rarely  beautiful  in  themselves,  rarely  even 
significant,  but  they  suggested  a  singular 
kind  of  beauty  and  significance,  through 
their  adjustment  in  a  pattern  or  arabesque. 
Atmosphere,  the  suggestion  of  what  was  not 
said,  was  everything;  and  in  an  essay  in  "  Le 
Tresor  des  Humbles"  Maeterlinck  told  us 
that  in  drama,  as  he  conceived  it,  it  was  only 
the  words  that  were  not  said  which  mat- 
tered. 

Gradually  the  words  began  to  mean  more 
in  the  scheme  of  the  play.  With  "Agla- 
vaine  et  Selysette"  we  got  a  drama  of  the 
inner  life,  in  which  there  was  little  action, 
little  effective  dramatic  speech,  but  in  which 
,  people  thought  about  action  and  talked 
about  action,  and  discussed  the  morality 
of  things  and  their  meaning,  very  beauti- 
fully. 

"  Monna  Vanna  "  is  a  development  out  of 
"Aglavaine  et  Selysette,"  and  in  it  for  the 
first  time  Maeterlinck  has  represented  the 
conflicts  of  the  inner  life  in  an  external 
form,  making  drama,  while  the  people  who 

138 


"Monna    Vanna" 

undergo  them  discuss  them  frankly  at  the 
moment  of  their  happening. 

In  a  significant  passage  of  "La  Sagesse 
et  la  Destinee,"  Maeterlinck  says:  "  On  nous 
affirme  que  toutes  les  grandes  tragedies  ne 
nous  offrent  pas  d'autre  spectacle  que  la 
lutte  de  rhomme  contre  la  f  atalite.  Je  crois, 
au  contraire,  qu'il  n'existe  pas  une  seule  tra- 
gedie  ou  la  fatalite  regne  reellement.  J'ai 
beau  les  parcourir,  je  n'en  trouve  pas  une  ou 
le  heros  combatte  le  destin  pur  et  simple. 
Au  fond,  ce  n'est  jamais  le  destin,  c'est  tou- 
jours  la  sagesse,  qu'il  attaque."  And,  on 
the  preceding  page,  he  says:  "Observons 
que  les  poetes  tragiques  osent  tres  rarement 
permettre  au  sage  de  paraitre  un  moment 
sur  la  scene.  Us  craignent  une  ame  haute 
parce  que  les  evenements  la  craignent."  Now 
it  is  this  conception  of  life  and  of  drama  that 
we  find  in  "Monna  Vanna."  We  see  the 
conflict  of  wisdom,  personified  in  the  old 
man  Marco  and  in  the  instinctively  wise  Gio- 
vanna,  with  the  tragic  folly  personified  in 
the  husband  Guido,  who  rebels  against  truth 
and  against  life,  and  loses  even  that  which  he 
139 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

would  sacrifice  the  world  to  keep.  The  play 
is  full  of  lessons  in  life,  and  its  deepest  les- 
son is  a  warning  against  the  too  ready  ac- 
ceptance of  this  or  that  aspect  of  truth  or  of 
morality.  Here  is  a  play  in  which  almost 
every  character  is  noble,  in  which  treachery 
becomes  a  virtue,  a  lie  becomes  more  vital 
than  truth,  and  only  what  we  are  accustomed 
to  call  virtue  shows  itself  mean,  petty,  and 
even  criminal.  And  it  is  most  like  life,  as 
life  really  is,  in  this :  that  at  any  moment  the 
whole  course  of  the  action  might  be  changed, 
the  position  of  every  character  altered,  or 
even  reversed,  by  a  mere  decision  of  the  will, 
open  to  each,  and  that  things  happen  as  they 
do  because  it  is  impossible,  in  the  nature  of 
each,  that  the  choice  could  be  otherwise. 
Character,  in  the  deepest  sense,  makes  the 
action,  and  there  is  something  in  the  move- 
ment of  the  play  which  resembles  the  grave 
and  reasonable  march  of  a  play  of  Sopho- 
cles, in  which  men  and  women  deliberate 
wisely  and  not  only  passionately,  in  which  it 
is  not  only  the  cry  of  the  heart  and  of  the 
senses  which  takes  the  form  of  drama. 

140 


"Monna    Vanna3' 

In  Maeterlinck's  earlier  plays,  in  "Les 
Aveugles,"  "  Interieur,"  and  even  "  Pelleas 
et  Melisande,"  he  is  dramatic  after  a  new, 
experimental  fashion  of  his  own;  "Monna 
Vanna  "  is  dramatic  in  the  obvious  sense  of 
the  word.  The  action  moves,  and  moves  al- 
ways in  an  interesting,  even  in  a  telling, 
way.  But  at  the  same  time  I  cannot  but 
feel  that  something  has  been  lost.  The 
speeches,  which  were  once  so  short  as  to  be 
enigmatical,  are  now  too  long,  too  explana- 
tory; they  are  sometimes  rhetorical,  and  have 
more  logic  than  life.  The  playwright  has 
gained  experience,  the  thinker  has  gained 
wisdom,  but  the  curious  artist  has  lost  some 
of  his  magic.  No  doubt  the  wizard  had 
drawn  his  circle  too  small,  but  now  he  has 
stepped  outside  his  circle  into  a  world  which 
no  longer  obeys  his  formulas.  In  casting 
away  his  formulas,  has  he  the  big  human 
mastery  which  alone  could  replace  them? 
"  Monna  Vanna  "  is  a  remarkable  and  beau- 
tiful play,  but  it  is  not  a  masterpiece.  "  La 
Mort  de  Tintagiles  "  was  a  masterpiece  of  a 
tiny,  too  deliberate  kind;  but  it  did  some- 

141 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

thing  which  no  one  had  ever  done  before. 
We  must  still,  though  we  have  seen  "  Monna 
Vanna,"  wait,  feeling  that  Maeterlinck  has 
not  given  us  all  that  he  is  capable  of  giv- 
ing us. 


,     142 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CENSORSHIP 

THE  letter  of  protest  which  appeared  in  the 
Times  of  June  30,  1903,  signed  by  Mr. 
Swinburne,  Mr.  Meredith,  and  Mr.  Hardy, 
the  three  highest  names  in  contemporary 
English  literature,  will,  I  hope,  have  done 
something  to  save  the  literary  reputation  of 
England  from  such  a  fate  as  one  eminent 
dramatic  critic  sees  in  store  for  it.  "Once 
more,"  says  the  Athenaeum,  "the  caprice  of 
our  censure  brings  contempt  upon  us,  and 
makes,  or  should  make,  us  the  laughing- 
stock of  Europe."  The  Morning  Post  is 
more  lenient,  and  is  "  sincerely  sorry  for  the 
unfortunate  censor,"  because  "he  has  im- 
mortalised himself  by  prohibiting  the  most 
beautiful  play  of  his  time,  and  must  live  to 
be  the  laughing-stock  of  all  sensible  people." 
Now  the  question  is :  which  is  really  made 
ridiculous  by  this  ridiculous  episode  of  the 
prohibition  of  Maeterlinck's  "Monna  Van- 
na,"  England  or  Mr.  Bedford?  Mr.  Red- 

143 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ford  is  a  gentleman  of  whom  I  only  know 
that  he  is  not  himself  a  man  of  letters,  and 
that  he  has  not  given  any  public  indication 
of  an  intelligent  interest  in  literature  as  lit- 
erature. If,  as  a  private  person,  before  his 
appointment  to  the  official  post  of  censor  of 
the  drama,  he  had  expressed  in  print  an 
opinion  on  any  literary  or  dramatic  ques- 
tion, that  opinion  would  have  been  taken  on 
its  own  merits,  and  would  have  carried  only 
the  weight  of  its  own  contents.  The  official 
appointment,  which  gives  him  absolute 
power  over  the  public  life  or  death  of  a  play, 
gives  to  the  public  no  guarantee  of  his  fit- 
ness for  the  post.  So  far  as  the  public  can 
judge,  he  was  chosen  as  the  typical  "  man  in 
the  street,"  the  "plain  man  who  wants  a 
plain  answer,"  the  type  of  the  "golden 
mean,"  or  mediocrity.  We  hear  that  he  is 
honest  and  diligent,  that  he  reads  every  word 
of  every  play  sent  for  his  inspection.  These 
are  the  virtues  of  the  capable  clerk,  not  of 
the  penetrating  judge.  Now  the  position, 
if  it  is  to  be  taken  seriously,  must  require 
delicate  discernment  as  well  as  inflexible  up- 

144 


The   Question   of   Censorship 

Tightness.  Is  Mr.  Redford  capable  of  dis- 
criminating between  what  is  artistically  fine 
and  what  is  artistically  ignoble?  If  not,  he 
is  certainly  incapable  of  discriminating  be- 
tween what  is  morally  fine  and  what  is  mor- 
ally ignoble.  It  is  useless  for  him  to  say  that 
he  is  not  concerned  with  art,  but  with  mor- 
als. They  cannot  be  dissevered,  because  it 
is  really  the  art  which  makes  the  morality. 
In  other  words,  morality  does  not  consist  in 
the  facts  of  a  situation  or  in  the  words  of  a 
speech,  but  in  the  spirit  which  informs  the 
whole  work.  Whatever  may  be  the  facts  of 
"Monna  Vanna"  (and  I  contend  that  they 
are  entirely  above  reproach,  even  as  facts), 
no  one  capable  of  discerning  the  spirit  of  a 
work  could  possibly  fail  to  realise  that  the 
whole  tendency  of  the  play  is  noble  and  in- 
vigorating. All  this,  all  that  is  essential,  ev- 
idently escapes  Mr.  Redford.  He  licenses 
what  the  Times  rightly  calls  "  such  a  gross 
indecency  as  'The  Girl  from  Maxim's."' 
But  he  refuses  to  license  "  Monna  Vanna," 
and  he  refuses  to  state  his  reason  for  with- 
holding the  license.  The  fact  is,  that  moral 

145 


Plays,  Acting^  and  Music 

questions  are  discussed  in  it,  not  taken  for 
granted,  and  the  plain  man,  the  man  in  the 
street,  is  alarmed  whenever  people  begin  to 
discuss  moral  questions.  "  The  Girl  from 
Maxim's"  is  merely  indecent,  it  raises  no 
problems.  "Monna  Vanna"  raises  prob- 
lems. Therefore,  says  the  censor,  it  must 
be  suppressed.  By  his  decision  in  regard  to 
this  play  of  Maeterlinck,  Mr.  Redf  ord  has 
of  course  conclusively  proved  his  unfitness 
for  his  post.  But  that  is  only  one  part  of 
the  question.  The  question  is :  could  any  one 
man  be  found  on  whose  opinion  all  England 
might  safely  rely  for  its  dramatic  instruc- 
tion and  entertainment?  I  do  not  think  such 
a  man  could  be  found.  With  Mr.  Redf  ord, 
as  the  Times  puts  it,  "  any  tinge  of  literary 
merit  seems  at  once  to  excite  his  worst  suspi- 
cions." But  with  a  censor  whose  sympathies 
were  too  purely  literary,  literary  in  too  nar- 
row a  sense,  would  not  scruples  of  some 
other  kind  begin  to  intrude  themselves,  scru- 
ples of  the  student  who  cannot  tolerate  an 
innocent  jesting  with  "serious"  things, 
scruples  of  the  moralist  who  must  choose  be- 
146 


The   Question   of   Censorship 

tween  Maeterlinck  and  d'Annunzio,  between 
Tolstoi  and  Ibsen?  I  cannot  so  much  as 
think  of  a  man  in  all  England  who  would  be 
capable  of  justifying  the  existence  of  the 
censorship.  Is  it,  then,  merely  Mr.  Redf  ord 
who  is  made  ridiculous  by  this  ridiculous  epi- 
sode, or  is  it  not,  after  all,  England,  which 
has  given  us  the  liberty  of  the  press  and 
withheld  from  us  the  liberty  of  the  stage? 


147 


A  PLAY  AND  THE  PUBLIC 

JOHN  OLIVER  HOBBES,  Mrs.  Craigie,  once 
wrote  a  play  called  "  The  Bishop's  Move," 
which  was  an  attempt  to  do  artistically  what 
so  many  writers  for  the  stage  have  done 
without  thinking  about  art  at  all. 

She  gave  us  good  writing  instead  of  bad, 
delicate  worldly  wisdom  instead  of  vague 
sentiment  or  vague  cynicism,  and  the  man- 
ners of  society  instead  of  an  imitation  of 
some  remote  imitation  of  those  manners.  The 
play  is  a  comedy,  and  the  situations  are  not 
allowed  to  get  beyond  the  control  of  good 
manners.  The  game  is  after  all  the  thing, 
and  the  skill  of  the  game.  When  the  pawns 
begin  to  cry  out  in  the  plaintive  way  of 
pawns,  they  are  hushed  before  they  be- 
come disturbing.  It  is  in  this  power  to 
play  the  game  on  its  own  artificial  lines, 
and  yet  to  play  with  pieces  made  scrupu- 
lously after  the  pattern  of  nature,  that  Mrs. 
148 


A   Play   and   the  Public 

Craigie's  skill,  in  this  play,  seems  to  me  to 
consist. 

Here  then,  is  a  play  which  makes  no  de- 
mands on  the  pocket  handkerchief,  to  stifle 
either  laughter  or  sobs,  but  in  which  the 
writer  is  seen  treating  the  real  people  of  the 
audience  and  the  imaginary  people  of  the 
play  as  if  they  were  alike  ladies  and  gen- 
men.  How  this  kind  of  work  will  appeal  to 
the  general  public  I  can  hardly  tell.  When  I 
saw  "  Sweet  and  Twenty "  on  its  first  per- 
formance, I  honestly  expected  the  audience 
to  burst  out  laughing.  On  the  contrary, 
the  audience  thrilled  with  delight,  and  audi- 
dience  after  audience  went  on  indefinitely 
thrilling  with  delight.  If  the  caricature  of 
the  natural  emotions  can  give  so  much 
pleasure,  will  a  delicate  suggestion  of  them, 
as  in  this  play,  ever  mean  very  much  to  the 
public? 

The  public  in  England  is  a  strange  crea- 
ture, to  be  studied  with  wonder  and  curiosity 
and  I  am  not  sure  that  a  native  can  ever 
hope  to  understand  it.  At  the  performance 
of  a  recent  melodrama,  "  Sweet  Nell  of 
149 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

Old  Drury,"  I  happened  to  be  in  the 
last  row  of  the  stalls.  My  seat  was 
not  altogether  well  adapted  for  seeing 
and  hearing  the  play,  but  it  was  admir- 
ably adapted  for  observing  the  pit,  and  I 
gave  some  of  my  attention  to  my  neighbours 
there.  Whenever  a  foolish  joke  was  made 
on  the  stage,  when  Miss  Julia  Neilson,  as 
Nell,  the  orange  girl,  stuttered  with  laughter 
or  romped  heavily  across  the  stage,  the  pit 
thrilled  and  quivered  with  delight.  At  every 
piece  of  clowning  there  was  the  same  respon- 
sive gurgle  of  delight.  Tricks  of  acting  so 
badly  done  that  I  should  have  thought  a 
child  would  have  seen  through  them,  and  re- 
sented them  as  an  imposition,  were  accepted 
in  perfect  good  faith,  and  gloated  over.  I 
was  turning  over  the  matter  in  my  mind  aft- 
erwards, when  I  remembered  something  that 
was  said  to  me  the  other  day  by  a  young 
Swedish  poet  who  is  now  in  London.  He 
told  me  that  he  had  been  to  most  of  the  thea- 
tres, and  he  had  been  surprised  to  find  that 
the  greater  part  of  the  pieces  which  were 
played  at  the  principal  London  theatres 

150 


A   Play  and  the  Public 

were  such  pieces  as  would  be  played  in  Nor- 
way and  Sweden  at  the  lower  class  theatres, 
and  that  nobody  here  seemed  to  mind.  The 
English  audience,  he  said,  reminded  him  of  a 
lot  of  children;  they  took  what  was  set  be- 
fore them  with  ingenuous  good  temper,  they 
laughed  when  they  were  expected  to  laugh, 
cried  when  they  were  expected  to  cry.  But 
of  criticism,  preference,  selection,  not  a 
trace.  He  was  amazed,  for  he  had  been  told 
that  London  was  the  centre  of  civilisation. 
Well,  in  future  I  shall  try  to  remember, 
when  I  hear  an  audience  clapping  its  hands 
wildly  over  some  bad  play,  badly  acted:  it  is 
all  right,  it  is  only  the  children. 


151 


THE  TEST  OF  THE  ACTOR 

THE  interest  of  bad  plays  lies  in  the  test 
which  they  afford  of  the  capability  of  the 
actor.  To  what  extent,  however,  can  an 
actor  really  carry  through  a  play  which  has 
not  even  the  merits  of  its  defects,  such  a 
play,  for  instance,  as  Mr.  Henry  Arthur 
Jones  has  produced  in  "The  Princess's 
Nose"?  Mr.  Jones  has  sometimes  been 
mistaken  for  a  man  of  letters,  as  by  a  dis- 
tinguished dramatic  critic,  who,  writing  a 
complimentary  preface,  has  said :  :<  The 
claim  of  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones's  more 
ambitious  plays  to  rank  as  literature  may 
have  been  in  some  cases  grudgingly  allowed, 
but  has  not  been  seriously  contested."  Mr. 
Jones  himself  has  assured  us  that  he  has 
thought  about  life,  and  would  like  to  give 
some  representation  of  it  in  his  plays.  That 
is  apparently  what  he  means  by  this  perora- 
tion, which  once  closed  an  article  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century:  "O  human  life!  so 

152 


The  Test  of  the  Actor 

varied,  so  vast,  so  complex,  so  rich  and  subtle 
in  tremulous  deep  organ  tones,  and  soft  pro- 
claim of  silver  flutes,  so  utterly  beyond  our 
spell  of  insight,  who  of  us  can  govern  the 
thunder  and  whirlwind  of  thy  ventages  to 
any  utterance  of  harmony,  or  pluck  out  the 
heart  of  thy  eternal  mystery?"  Does  Mr. 
Jones,  I  wonder,  or  the  distinguished  critic, 
really  hear  any  "soft  proclaim  of  silver 
flutes,"  or  any  of  the  other  organ  effects 
which  he  enumerates,  in  "The  Princess's 
Nose"?  Does  anyone  "seriously  contest" 
its  right  not  to  "rank  as  literature"?  The 
audience,  for  once,  was  unanimous.  Mr. 
Jones  was  not  encouraged  to  appear.  And 
yet  there  had  been  applause,  prolonged  ap- 
plause, at  many  points  throughout  this  be- 
wildering evening.  The  applause  was 
meant  for  the  actors. 

If  Mr.  Jones  had  shown  as  much  tact  in 
the  construction  of  his  play  as  in  the  selec- 
tion of  his  cast,  how  admirable  the  play 
would  have  been!  I  have  rarely  seen  a  play 
in  which  each  actor  seemed  to  fit  into  his 
part  with  such  exactitude.  But  the  play! 

153 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

Well,  the  play  began  as  a  comedy,  continued 
as  a  tragedy,  and  ended  as  a  farce.  It  came 
to  a  crisis  every  five  minutes,  it  suggested 
splendid  situations,  and  then  caricatured 
them  unintentionally,  it  went  shilly-shally- 
ing about  among  the  emotions  and  sensa- 
tions which  may  be  drama  or  melodrama, 
whichever  the  handling  makes  them.  "  You 
see  there  is  a  little  poetical  justice  going 
about  the  world,"  says  the  Princess, 
when  she  hears  that  her  rival,  against  whom 
she  has  fought  in  vain,  has  been  upset 
by  Providence  in  the  form  of  a  motor-car, 
and  the  bridge  of  her  nose  broken.  The 
broken  nose  is  Mr.  Jones's  symbol  for  poeti- 
cal justice;  it  indicates  his  intellectual  atti- 
tude. There  are  many  parts  of  the  play 
where  he  shows,  as  he  has  so  often  shown, 
a  genuine  skill  in  presenting  and  manipu- 
lating humorous  minor  characters.  As  usual, 
they  have  little  to  do  with  the  play,  but  they 
are  amusing  for  their  moment.  It  is  the 
serious  characters  who  will  not  be  serious. 
They  are  meant  well,  the  action  hovers  about 
them  with  little  tempting  solicitations,  con- 

154 


The  Test  of  the  Actor 

tinually  offering  them  an  opportunity  to  be 
fine,  to  be  genuine,  and  then  withdrawing 
it  before  it  can  be  grasped.  The  third  act 
has  all  the  material  of  tragedy,  but  the  ma- 
terial is  wasted;  only  the  actress  makes  any- 
thing of  it.  We  know  how  Sullivan  will 
take  a  motive  of  mere  farce,  such  words  as 
the  " O  Captain  Shaw!"  of  " lolanthe,"  and 
will  write  a  lovely  melody  to  go  with  it,  fit- 
ting his  music  to  the  feeling  which  the  words 
do  but  caricature.  -That  is  how  Miss  Irene 
Vanbrugh  handled  Mr.  Jones's  unshapen 
material.  By  the  earnestness,  sincerity,  sheer 
nature,  power,  fire,  dignity,  and  gaiety  of 
her  acting,  she  made  for  us  a  figure  which 
Mr.  Jones  had  not  made.  Mr.  Jones  would 
set  his  character  in  some  impossible  situation, 
and  Miss  Vanbrugh  would  make  us,  for  the 
moment,  forget  its  impossibility.  He  would 
give  her  a  trivial  or  a  grotesque  or  a  vulgar 
action  to  do,  and  she  would  do  it  with  dis- 
tinction. She  had  force  in  lightness,  a  vivid 
malice,  a  magnetic  cheerfulness;  and  she 
could  suffer  silently,  and  be  sincere  in  a  trag- 
edy which  had  been  conceived  without  sin- 

155 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

cerity.  If  acting  could  save  a  play,  "  The 
Princess's  Nose  "  would  have  been  saved.  It 
was  not  saved. 

And  the  reason  is  that  even  the  best 
of  actors  cannot  save  a  play  which 
insists  on  defeating  them  at  every  turn. 
Yet,  as  we  may  realise  any  day  when 
Sarah  Bernhardt  acts  before  us,  there 
is  a  certain  kind  of  frankly  melodramatic 
play  which  can  be  lifted  into  at  all 
events  a  region  of  excited  and  gratified 
nerves.  I  have  lately  been  to  see  a  melo- 
drama called  "  The  Heel  of  Achilles,"  which 
Miss  Julia  Neilson  has  been  giving  at  the 
Globe  Theatre.  The  play  was  meant  to  tear 
at  one's  susceptibilities,  much  as  "  La  Tosca  " 
tears  at  them.  "La  Tosca"  is  not  a  fine 
play  in  itself,  though  it  is  a  much  better 
play  than  "  The  Heel  of  Achilles."  But  it  is 
the  vivid,  sensational  acting  of  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt which  gives  one  all  the  shudders.  "  The 
Heel  of  Achilles  "  did  not  give  me  a  single 
shudder,  not  because  it  was  not  packed  with 
the  raw  material  of  sensation,  but  because 

156 


The  Test  of  the  Actor 

Miss  Julia  Neilson  went  through  so  many 
trying  experiences  with  nerves  of  marble. 

I  cannot  help  wondering  at  the  curious 
lack  of  self-knowledge  in  actors.  Here  is 
a  play,  which  depends  for  a  great  deal  of 
its  effect  on  a  scene  in  which  Lady  Leslie, 
a  young  Englishwoman  in  Russia,  promises 
to  marry  a  Russian  prince  whom  she  hates, 
in  order  to  save  her  betrothed  lover  from 
being  sent  to  Siberia.  The  lover  is  shut  in 
between  two  doors,  unable  to  get  out;  he  is 
the  bearer  of  a  State  secret,  and  everything 
depends  on  his  being  able  to  catch  the  eleven 
p.  M.  train  for  Berlin.  The  Russian  prince 
stands  before  the  young  Englishwoman,  of- 
fering her  the  key  of  the  door,  the  safety 
of  her  lover,  and  his  own  hand  in  marriage. 
Now,  she  has  to  express  by  her  face  and  her 
movements  all  the  feelings  of  astonishment, 
horror,  suspense,  love,  hatred,  distraction, 
which  such  a  situation  would  call  up  in  her. 
If  she  does  not  express  them  the  scene  goes 
for  nothing.  The  actress  stakes  all  on  this 
scene. 

157 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

Now,  is  it  possible  that  Miss  Julia  Neilson 
really  imagined  herself  to  be  capable  of  ren- 
dering this  scene  as  it  should  be  rendered? 
It  is  a  scene  that  requires  no  brains,  no  subtle 
emotional  quality,  none  of  the  more  intellec- 
tual merits  of  acting.  It  requires  simply  a 
great  passivity  to  feeling,  the  mere  skill  of 
letting  horrors  sweep  over  the  face  and  the 
body  like  drenching  waves.  The  actress 
need  not  know  how  she  does  it;  she  may  do 
it  without  an  effort,  or  she  may  obtain  her 
spontaneity  by  an  elaborate  calculation.  But 
to  do  it  at  all  she  must  be  the  actress  in  every 
fibre  of  her  body ;  she  must  be  able  to  vibrate 
freely.  If  the  emotion  does  not  seize  her  in 
its  own  grasp,  and  then  seize  us  through  her, 
it  will  all  go  for  nothing.  Well,  Miss  Neil- 
son  sat,  and  walked,  and  started,  and  became 
rigid,  and  glanced  at  the  clock,  and  knelt, 
and  fell  against  the  wall,  and  cast  her  eyes 
about,  and  threw  her  arms  out,  and  made 
her  voice  husky;  and  it  all  went  for  nothing. 
Never  for  an  instant  did  she  suggest  what 
she  was  trying  to  suggest,  and  after  the 
first  moment  of  disappointment  the  mind 

158 


The  Test  of  the  Actor 

was  left  calmly  free  to  watch  her  attempt 
as  if  it  were  speculating  round  a  prob- 
lem. 

How  many  English  actresses,  I  wonder, 
would  have  been  capable  of  dealing  ade- 
quately with  such  a  scene  as  that?  I  take  it, 
not  because  it  is  a  good  scene,  but  because  it 
affords  so  rudimentary  a  test  of  the  capacity 
for  acting.  The  test  of  the  capacity  for  act- 
ing begins  where  words  end ;  it  is  independ- 
ent of  words;  you  may  take  poor  words 
as  well  as  fine  words ;  it  is  all  the  same.  The 
embodying  power,  the  power  to  throw  open 
one's  whole  nature  to  an  overcoming  sen- 
sation, the  power  to  render  this  sensation  in 
so  inevitable  a  way  that  others  shall  feel  it: 
that  is  the  one  thing  needful.  It  is  not  art, 
it  is  not  even  the  beginning  of  art;  but  it  is 
the  foundation  on  which  alone  art  can  be 
built. 

The  other  day,  in  "Ulysses,"  there  was 
only  one  piece  of  acting  that  was  quite  con- 
vincing: the  acting  of  Mr.  Brough  as  the 
Swineherd.  It  is  a  small  part  and  an  easy 
part,  but  it  was  perfectly  done.  Almost 

159 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

any  other  part  would  have  been  more  strik- 
ing and  surprising  if  it  had  been  done  as 
perfectly,  but  no  other  part  was  done  as 
perfectly.  Mr.  Brough  has  developed  a 
stage-personality  of  his  own,  with  only  a 
limited  range  of  emotion,  but  he  has  devel- 
oped it  until  it  has  become  a  second  nature 
with  him.  He  has  only  to  speak,  and  he 
may  say  what  he  likes;  we  accept  him  after 
the  first  word,  and  he  remains  what  that  first 
word  has  shown  him  to  be.  Mr.  Tree,  with 
his  many  gifts,  his  effective  talents,  all  his 
taste,  ambition,  versatility,  never  produces 
just  that  effect:  he  remains  interestingly 
aside  from  what  he  is  doing;  you  see  his 
brain  working  upon  it,  you  enjoy  his  by- 
play; his  gait,  his  studied  gestures,  absorb 
you;  "How  well  this  is  done!"  you  say, 
and  "How  well  that  is  done!"  and,  in- 
deed, you  get  a  complete  picture  out  of  his 
representation  of  that  part:  a  picture,  not 
a  man. 

I  am  not  sure  that  melodrama  is  not  the 
hardest  test  of  the  actor:  it  is,  at  least,  the 
surest.    All   the   human    emotions    throng 
160 


The   Test   of   the  Actor 

noisily  together  in  the  making  of  melo- 
drama: they  are  left  there,  in  their  naked 
muddle,  and  they  come  to  no  good  end;  but 
there  they  are.  To  represent  any  primary 
emotion,  and  to  be  ineffective,  is  to  fail  in 
the  fundamental  thing.  All  actors  should 
be  sent  to  school  in  melodrama,  as  all  dra- 
matic authors  should  learn  their  trade  there. 


16U 


THE  PRICE  OF  REALISM 

MODERN  staging,  which  has  been  carried  in 
England  to  its  highest  point  of  excellence, 
professes  to  aim  at  beauty,  and  is,  indeed, 
often  beautiful  in  detail.  But  its  real  aim  is 
not  at  the  creation  of  beautiful  pictures,  in 
subordination  to  the  words  and  actions  of 
the  play,  but  at  supplementing  words  and 
actions  by  an  exact  imitation  of  real  sur- 
roundings. Imitation,  not  creation,  is  its 
end,  and  in  its  attempt  to  imitate  the  general 
aspect  of  things  it  leads  the  way  to  the  sub- 
stitution of  things  themselves  for  perfectly 
satisfactory  indications  of  them.  "Real 
water"  we  have  all  heard  of,  and  we  know 
its  place  in  the  theatre;  but  this  is  only  the 
simplest  form  of  this  anti-artistic  endeavour 
to  be  real.  Sir  Henry  Irving  will  use,  for  a 
piece  of  decoration  meant  to  be  seen  only 
from  a  distance,  a  garland  of  imitation  flow- 
ers, exceedingly  well  done,  costing  perhaps 
162 


The  Price  of  Realism 

two  pounds,  where  two  or  three  brushes  of 
paint  would  have  supplied  its  place  more  ef- 
fectively. When  d'Annunzio's  "  Francesca 
da  Rimini "  was  put  on  the  stage  in  Rome,  a 
pot  of  basil  was  brought  daily  from  Naples 
in  order  that  it  might  be  laid  on  the  window- 
sill  of  the  room  in  which  Francesca  and 
Paolo  read  of  Lancelot  and  Guinevere.  In 
an  interview  published  in  one  of  the  English 
papers,  d'Annunzio  declared  that  he  had  all 
his  stage  decorations  made  in  precious  metal 
by  fine  craftsmen,  and  that  he  had  done  this 
for  an  artistic  purpose,  and  not  only  for  the 
beauty  of  the  things  themselves.  The  ges- 
ture, he  said,  of  the  actor  who  lifts  to  his 
lips  a  cup  of  finely-wrought  gold  will  be 
finer,  more  sincere,  than  that  of  the  actor 
who  uses  a  gilded  "  property." 

If  so,  I  can  but  answer,  the  actor  is  no 
actor,  but  an  amateur.  The  true  actor  walks 
in  a  world  as  real  in  its  unreality  as  that 
which  surrounds  the  poet  or  the  enthusiast. 
The  bare  boards,  chairs,  and  T-light,  in  the 
midst  of  which  he  rehearses,  are  as  signifi- 
cantly palaces  or  meadows  to  him,  while  he 
163 


Plays,  -Acting,  and  Music 

speaks  his  lines  and  lives  himself  into  his 
character,  as  all  the  real  grass  and  real  wood- 
work with  which  the  manager  will  cumher 
the  stage  on  the  first  night.  As  little  will  he 
need  to  distinguish  between  the  gilt  and  the 
gold  cup  as  between  the  imaginary  charac- 
ters who  surround  him,  and  his  mere  friends 
and  acquaintances  who  are  speaking  for 
them. 

This  costly  and  inartistic  aim  at  reality, 
then,  is  the  vice  of  the  modern  stage,  and,  at 
its  best  or  worst,  can  it  be  said  that  it  is 
really  even  what  it  pretends  to  be:  a  per- 
fectly deceptive  imitation  of  the  real  thing? 
I  said  once,  to  clinch  an  argument  against 
it,  by  giving  it  its  full  possible  credit,  that 
the  modern  staging  can  give  you  the  hour  of 
the  day  and  the  corner  of  the  country  with 
precise  accuracy.  But  can  it?  Has  the 
most  gradual  of  stage-moons  ever  caught 
the  miraculous  lunar  trick  to  the  life?  Has 
the  real  hedgerow  ever  brought  a  breath  of 
the  country  upon  the  stage?  I  do  not  think 
so,  and  meanwhile,  we  have  been  trying  our 
hardest  to  persuade  ourselves  that  it  is  so, 

164 


The    Price    of    Realism 

instead  of  abandoning  ourselves  to  a  new, 
strange  atmosphere,  to  the  magic  of  the  play 
itself. 

What  Mr.  Craig  does  is  to  provide  a  plain, 
conventional,  or  darkened  background  for 
life,  as  life  works  out  its  own  ordered  lines 
on  the  stage ;  he  gives  us  suggestion  instead 
of  reality,  a  symbol  instead  of  an  imitation; 
and  he  relies,  for  his  effects,  on  a  new  system 
of  lighting  from  above,  not  from  below,  and 
on  a  quite  new  kind  of  drill,  as  I  may  call  it, 
by  which  he  uses  his  characters  as  masses 
and  patterns,  teaching  them  to  move  all  to- 
gether, with  identical  gestures.  The  eye  is 
carried  right  through  or  beyond  these  hori- 
zons of  canvas,  and  the  imagination  with  it; 
instead  of  stopping  entangled  among  real 
stalks  and  painted  gables. 

I  have  seen  nothing  so  imaginative,  so 
restful,  so  expressive,  on  the  English  stage 
as  these  simple  and  elaborately  woven  de- 
signs, in  patterns  of  light  and  drapery  and 
movement,  which  in  "The  Masque  of 
Love  "  had  a  new  quality  of  charm,  a  com- 
pleteness of  invention,  for  which  I  would 

165 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

have  given  all  d'Annunzio's  golden  cups  and 
Mr.  Tree's  boats  on  real  Thames  water. 

Here,  for  once,  we  see  the  stage  treated  in 
the  proper  spirit,  as  material  for  art,  not  as 
a  collection  of  real  objects,  or  the  imitation 
of  real  objects.  Why  should  not  the  visible 
world  be  treated  in  the  same  spirit  as  the  in- 
visible world  of  character  and  temperament? 
A  fine  play  is  not  the  copy  of  an  incident  or 
the  stenography  of  a  character.  A  poetical 
play,  to  limit  myself  to  that,  requires  to  be 
put  on  the  stage  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest 
that  atmosphere  which,  if  it  is  a  true  poem, 
will  envelop  its  mental  outlines.  That  at- 
mosphere, which  is  of  its  essence,  is  the  first 
thing  to  be  lost,  in  the  staging  of  most  poet- 
ical plays.  It  is  precisely  what  the  stage- 
manager,  if  he  happens  to  have  the  secret  of 
his  own  art,  will  endeavour  most  persistently 
to  suggest.  He  will  make  it  his  business  to 
compete  with  the  poet,  and  not,  after  the 
manner  of  Drury  Lane,  with  the  accidents 
of  life  and  the  vulgarities  of  nature. 


166 


ON  CROSSING  STAGE  TO  RIGHT 

IF  you  look  into  the  actors'  prompt-books, 
the  most  frequent  direction  which  you  will 
find  is  this:  "Cross  stage  to  right."  It  is 
not  a  mere  direction,  it  is  a  formula ;  it  is  not 
a  formula  only,  but  a  universal  remedy. 
Whenever  the  action  seems  to  flag,  or  the 
dialogue  to  become  weak  or  wordy,  you 
must  "  cross  stage  to  right " ;  no  matter  what 
is  wrong  with  the  play,  this  will  set  it  right. 
We  have  heard  so  much  of  the  "  action  "  of 
a  play,  that  the  stage-manager  in  England 
seems  to  imagine  that  dramatic  action  is  lit- 
erally a  movement  of  people  across  the  stage, 
even  if  for  no  other  reason  than  for  move- 
ment's sake.  Is  the  play  weak?  He  tries  to 
strengthen  it,  poor  thing,  by  sending  it  out 
walking  for  its  health. 

If  we  take  drama  with  any  seriousness,  as 

an  art  as  well  as  an  improvisation,  we  shall 

realise  that  one  of  its  main  requirements  is 

that  it  should  make  pictures.     That  is  the 

167 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

lesson  of  Bayreuth,  and  when  one  comes 
away,  the  impression  which  remains,  almost 
longer  than  the  impression  of  the  music  it- 
self, is  that  grave,  regulated  motion  of  the 
actors.  As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  no  actor 
makes  a  gesture  which  has  not  been  regu- 
lated for  him;  there  is  none  of  that  unintel- 
ligent haphazard  known  as  being  "nat- 
ural ";  these  people  move  like  music,  or  with 
that  sense  of  motion  which  it  is  the  business 
of  painting  to  arrest.  But  here,  of  course, 
I  am  speaking  of  the  poetic  drama,  of  drama 
which  does  not  aim  at  the  realistic  represent- 
ation of  modern  life.  Maeterlinck  should 
be  acted  in  this  solemn  way,  in  a  kind  of 
convention ;  but  I  admit  that  you  cannot  act 
Ibsen  in  quite  the  same  way. 

The  other  day,  when  Mme.  Jeanne  Gra- 
nier's  company  came  over  here  to  give  us 
some  lessons  in  acting,  I  watched  a  little 
scene  in  "  La  Veine,"  which  was  one  of  the 
telling  scenes  of  the  play :  Guitry  and  Bras- 
seur  standing  face  to  face  for  some  minutes, 
looking  at  their  watches,  and  then  waiting, 
each  with  a  single,  fixed  expression  on  his 

168 


On   Crossing  Stage   to   Right 

face,  in  which  the  whole  temperament  of 
each  is  summed  up.  One  is  inclined  to  say: 
No  English  actor  could  have  done  it.  Per- 
haps; but  then,  no  English  stage-manager 
would  have  let  them  do  it.  They  would  have 
been  told  to  move,  to  find  "  business,"  to  in- 
dulge in  gesture  which  would  not  come  nat- 
urally to  them.  Again,  in  "Tartuffe," 
when,  at  the  end,  the  hypocrite  is  exposed 
and  led  off  to  prison,  Coquelin  simply  turns 
his  back  on  the  audience,  and  stands,  with 
head  sullenly  down,  making  no  movement; 
then,  at  the  end,  he  turns  half-round  and 
walks  straight  off,  on  the  nearer  side  of  the 
stage,  giving  you  no  more  than  a  momen- 
tary glimpse  of  a  convulsed  face,  fixed  into 
a  definite,  gross,  raging  mood.  It  would 
have  taken  Mr.  Tree  five  minutes  to  get  off 
the  stage,  and  he  would  have  walked  to  and 
fro  with  a  very  multiplication  of  gesture, 
trying  on  one  face,  so  to  speak,  after  an- 
other. Would  it  have  been  so  effective,  that 
is  to  say,  so  real? 

A  great  part  of  the  art  of  French  acting 
consists  in  knowing  when  and  how  not  to  do 
169 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

things.  Their  blood  helps  them,  for  there  is 
movement  in  their  blood,  and  they  have 
.something  to  restrain.  But  they  have  real- 
ised the  art  there  is  in  being  quite  still,  in 
speaking  naturally,  as  people  do  when  they 
are  really  talking,  in  fixing  attention  on  the 
words  they  are  saying  and  not  on  their  an- 
tics while  saying  them.  The  other  day,  in 
the  first  act  of  "  The  Bishop's  Move  "  at  the 
Garrick,  there  is  a  Duchess  talking  to  a 
young  novice  in  the  refectory  of  a  French 
abbey.  After  standing  talking  to  him  for  a 
few  minutes,  with  only  such  movements  as 
would  be  quite  natural  under  the  circum- 
stances, she  takes  his  arm,  not  once  only  but 
twice,  and  walks  him  up  and  down  in  front 
of  the  footlights,  for  no  reason  in  the  world 
except  to  "  cross  stage  to  right."  The  stage 
trick  was  so  obvious  that  it  deprived  the 
scene  at  once  of  any  pretence  to  reality. 

The  fact  is,  that  we  do  not  sufficiently 
realise  the  diif erence  between  what  is  dra- 
matic and  what  is  merely  theatrical.  Drama 
is  made  to  be  acted,  and  the  finest  "  literary  " 
play  in  the  world,  if  it  wholly  fails  to  inter- 
170 


On    Crossing  Stage   to   Right 

est  people  on  the  stage,  will  have  wholly 
failed  in  its  first  and  most  essential  aim. 
But  the  finer  part  of  drama  is  implicit  in  the 
words  and  in  the  development  of  the  play, 
and  not  in  its  separate  small  details  of  literal 
"  action."  Two  people  should  be  able  to  sit 
quietly  in  a  room,  without  ever  leaving  their 
chairs,  and  to  hold  our  attention  breathless 
for  as  long  as  the  playwright  likes.  Given  a 
good  play,  French  actors  are  able  to  do  that. 
Given  a  good  play,  English  actors  are  not 
allowed  to  do  it. 

Is  it  not  partly  the  energy,  the  restless  en- 
ergy, of  the  English  character  which  pre- 
vents our  actors  from  ever  sitting  or  stand- 
ing still  on  the  stage?  We  are  a  nation  of 
travellers,  of  sailors,  of  business  people ;  and 
all  these  have  to  keep  for  ever  moving.  Our 
dances  are  the  most  vigorous  and  athletic  of 
dances,  they  carry  us  all  over  the  stage,  with 
all  kinds  of  leaping  and  kicking  movements. 
Our  music-hall  performers  have  invented  a 
kind  of  clowning  peculiar  to  this  country,  in 
which  kicking  and  leaping  are  also  a  part 
of  the  business.  Our  melodramas  are  con- 
171 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

structed  on  more  movable  planes,  with  more 
formidable  collapses  and  collisions,  than 
those  of  any  other  country.  Is  not,  then, 
the  persistent  English  habit  of  "crossing 
stage  to  right "  a  national  characteristic,  in- 
grained in  us,  and  not  only  a  matter  of  train- 
ing? It  is  this  reflection  which  hinders  me 
from  hoping,  with  much  confidence,  that  a 
reform  in  stage-management  will  lead  to  a 
really  quieter  and  simpler  way  of  acting. 
But  might  not  the  experiment  be  tried? 
Might  not  some  stage-manager  come  for- 
ward and  say:  "For  heaven's  sake  stand 
still,  my  dear  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  see 
if  you  cannot  interest  your  audience  without 
moving  more  than  twice  the  length  of  your 
own  feet?" 


172 


THE   SPEAKING  OF  VERSE 

WAS  there  ever  at  any  time  an  art,  an  ac- 
quired method,  of  speaking  verse,  as  definite 
as  the  art  and  method  of  singing  it?  The 
Greeks,  it  has  often  been  thought,  had  such 
a  method,  but  we  are  still  puzzling  in  vain 
over  their  choruses,  and  wondering  how  far 
they  were  sung,  how  far  they  were  spoken. 
Wagner  pointed  out  the  probability  that 
these  choruses  were  written  to  fixed  tunes, 
perhaps  themselves  the  accompaniment  to 
dances,  because  it  can  hardly  be  believed  that 
poems  of  so  meditative  a  kind  could  have 
themselves  given  rise  to  such  elaborate  and 
not  apparently  expressive  rhythms.  In 
later  times  there  have  been  stage  traditions, 
probably  developed  from  the  practice  of 
some  particular  actor,  many  conflicting  tra- 
ditions ;  but,  at  the  present  day,  there  is  not 
even  a  definite  bad  method,  but  mere  chaos, 
individual  caprice,  in  the  speaking  of  verse 
173 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

as  a  foolish  monotonous  tune  or  as  a  fool- 
ishly contorted  species  of  prose. 

An  attempt  has  lately  been  made  by  Mr. 
Yeats,  with  the  practical  assistance  of  Mr. 
Dolmetsch  and  Miss  Florence  Farr,  to  re- 
vive or  invent  an  art  of  speaking  verse  to  a 
pitch  sounded  by  a  musical  instrument.  Mr. 
Dolmetsch  has  made  instruments  which  he 
calls  psalteries,  and  Miss  Farr  has  herself 
learnt  and  has  taught  others,  to  chant  verse, 
in  a  manner  between  speaking  and  singing, 
to  the  accompaniment  of  the  psaltery.  Mr. 
Yeats  has  written  and  talked  and  lectured 
on  the  subject;  and  the  experiment  has  been 
tried  in  the  performances  of  Mr.  Gilbert 
Murray's  translation  of  the  "  Hippolytus  " 
of  Euripides.  Here,  then,  is  the  only  defin- 
ite attempt  which  has  been  made  in  our  time 
to  regulate  the  speech  of  actors  in  their 
speaking  of  verse.  No  problem  of  the  thea- 
tre is  more  important,  for  it  is  only  by  the 
quality  of  the  verse,  and  by  the  clearness, 
beauty,  and  expressiveness  of  its  rendering, 
that  a  play  of  Shakespeare  is  to  be  distin- 
guished, when  we  see  it  on  the  stage,  from 

174 


The  Speaking  of  Verse 

any  other  melodrama.  "I  see  no  reason," 
says  Lamb,  in  the  prof  oundest  essay  which 
has  ever  been  written  on  the  acting  of 
drama,  "  to  think  that  if  the  play  of  Hamlet 
were  written  over  again  by  some  such  writer 
as  Banks  or  Lillo,  retaining  the  process  of 
the  story,  but  totally  omitting  all  the  poetry 
of  it,  all  the  divine  features  of  Shakespeare, 
his  stupendous  intellect;  and  only  taking 
care  to  give  us  enough  of  passionate  dia- 
logue, which  Banks  or  Lillo  were  never  at  a 
loss  to  furnish ;  I  see  not  how  the  effect  could 
be  much  different  upon  an  audience,  nor 
how  the  actor  has  it  in  his  power  to  represent 
Shakespeare  to  us  differently  from  his  repre- 
sentation of  Banks  or  Lillo."  It  is  precisely 
by  his  speaking  of  that  poetry,  which  one 
is  accustomed  to  hear  hurried  over  or  turned 
into  mere  oratory,  that  the  actor  might,  if 
he  were  conscious  of  the  necessity  of  doing 
it,  and  properly  trained  to  do  it,  bring  be- 
fore the  audience  what  is  essential  in  Shakes- 
peare. Here,  in  the  rendering  of  words, 
is  the  actor's  first  duty  to  his  author,  if  he 
is  to  remember  that  a  play  is  acted,  not  for 
175 


The  Speaking  of  Verse 

the  exhibition  of  the  actor,  but  for  the  reali- 
sation of  the  play.  We  should  think  little 
of  the  "  dramatic  effect "  of  a  symphony,  in 
which  every  individual  note  had  not  been 
given  its  precise  value  by  every  instrument 
in  the  orchestra.  When  do  we  ever,  on  the 
stage,  see  the  slightest  attempt,  on  the  part 
of  even  the  "  solo  "  players,  to  give  its  pre- 
cise value  to  every  word  of  that  poetry  which 
is  itself  a  not  less  elaborate  piece  of  con- 
certed music? 

The  two  great  dangers  in  the  speaking 
of  verse  are  the  danger  of  over-emphasising 
the  meaning  and  the  danger  of  over-empha- 
sising the  sound.  I  was  never  more  con- 
scious of  the  former  danger  than  when  I 
heard  a  lecture  given  in  London  by  M.  Sil- 
vain,  of  the  Comedie  Francaise,  on  the  art 
of  speaking  on  the  stage. 

The  method  of  M.  Silvain  (who,  besides 
being  an  actor,  is  Professor  of  Declamation 
at  the  Conservatoire)  is  the  method  of  the 
elocutionist,  but  of  the  elocutionist  at  his 
best.  He  has  a  large,  round,  vibrating  voice, 
over  which  he  has  perfect  command.  "  M. 
176 


The  Speaking  of  Verse 

Silvain,"  says  M.  Catulle  Mendes,  "est  de 
ceux,  bien  rares  au  Theatre  Francais,  qu'on 
entend  meme  lorsqu'ils  parlent  has."  He  has 
trained  his  voice  to  do  everything  that  he 
wants  it  to  do ;  his  whole  body  is  full  of  life, 
energy,  sensitiveness  to  the  emotion  of  every 
word;  his  gestures  seem  to  be  at  once  spon- 
taneous and  calculated.  He  adores  verse, 
for  its  own  sake,  as  a  brilliant  executant 
adores  his  violin;  he  has  an  excellent  con- 
tempt for  prose,  as  an  inferior  form.  In 
all  his  renderings  of  verse,  he  never  forgot 
that  it  was  at  the  same  time  speech,  the  direct 
expression  of  character,  and  also  poetry,  a 
thing  with  its  own  reasons  for  existence. 
He  gave  La  Fontaine  in  one  way,  Moliere 
in  another,  Victor  Hugo  in  another,  some 
poor  modern  verse  in  yet  another.  But  in 
all  there  was  the  same  attempt:  to  treat  verse 
in  the  spirit  of  rhetoric,  that  is  to  say,  to 
over-emphasise  it  consistently  and  for  effect. 
In  a  tirade  from  Corneille's  "Cinna,"  he 
followed  the  angry  reasoning  of  the  lines 
by  counting  on  his  fingers:  one,  two,  three, 
as  if  he  were  underlining  the  important 

1 77 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

words  of  each  clause.  The  danger  of  this 
method  is  that  it  is  apt  to  turn  poetry  into 
a  kind  of  bad  logic.  There,  precisely, 
is  the  danger  of  the  French  concep- 
tion of  poetry,  and  M.  Silvain's  method 
brings  out  the  worst  faults  of  that  concep- 
tion. 

Now  in  speaking  verse  to  musical  notes, 
as  Mr.  Yeats  would  have  us  do,  we  are  at 
least  safe  from  this  danger.  Mr.  Yeats, 
being  a  poet,  knows  that  verse  is  first  of  all 
song.  In  purely  lyrical  verse,  with  which 
he  is  at  present  chiefly  concerned,  the  verse 
itself  has  a  melody  which  demands  expres- 
sion by  the  voice,  not  only  when  it  is  "  set 
to  music,"  but  when  it  is  said  aloud.  Every 
poet,  when  he  reads  his  own  verse,  reads  it 
with  certain  inflections  of  the  voice,  in  what 
is  often  called  a  "  sing-song "  way,  quite 
different  from  the  way  in  which  he  would 
read  prose.  Most  poets  aim  rather  at  giving 
the  musical  effect,  and  the  atmosphere,  the 
vocal  atmosphere,  of  the  poem,  than  at  em- 
phasising individual  meanings.  They  give, 
in  the  musician's  sense,  a  "  reading  "  of  the 
178 


The  Speaking  of   Verse 

poem,  an  interpretation  of  the  poem  as  a 
composition.  Mr.  Yeats  thinks  that  this 
kind  of  reading  can  be  stereotyped,  so  to 
speak,  the  pitch  noted  down  in  musical  notes, 
and  reproduced  with  the  help  of  a  simple 
stringed  instrument.  By  way  of  proof, 
Miss  Farr  repeated  one  of  Mr.  Yeats'  lyrics, 
as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  way  in  which 
Mr.  Yeats  himself  is  accustomed  to  say  it. 
She  took  the  pitch  from  certain  notes  which 
she  had  written  down,  and  which  she  struck 
on  Mr.  Dolmetsch's  psaltery.  Now  Miss 
Farr  has  a  beautiful  voice,  and  a  genuine 
feeling  for  the  beauty  of  verse.  She  said 
the  lines  better  than  most  people  would  have 
said  them,  but,  to  be  quite  frank,  did  she 
say  them  so  as  to  produce  the  effect  Mr. 
Yeats  himself  produces  whenever  he  repeats 
those  lines?  The  difference  was  fundamen- 
tal. The  one  was  a  spontaneous  thing,  pro- 
foundly felt;  the  other,  a  deliberate  imitation 
in  which  the  fixing  of  the  notes  made  any 
personal  interpretation,  good  or  bad,  im- 
possible. 

I  admit  that  the  way  in  which  most  actors 
179 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

speak  verse  is  so  deplorable  that  there  is 
much  to  be  said  for  a  purely  mechanical 
method,  even  if  it  should  turn  actors  into  lit- 
tle more  than  human  phonographs.  Many 
actors  treat  verse  as  a  slightly  more  stilted 
kind  of  prose,  and  their  main  aim  in  saying 
it  is  to  conceal  from  the  audience  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  prose.  They  think  of  nothing 
but  what  they  take  to  be  the  expression,  and 
when  they  come  to  a  passage  of  purely  lyric 
quality  they  give  it  as  if  it  were  a  quotation, 
having  nothing  to  do  with  the  rest  of  the 
speech.  Anything  is  better  than  this  hap- 
hazard way  of  misdoing  things,  either  M. 
Silvain's  oratory  or  the  intoning  into  which 
Mr.  Yeats'  method  would  almost  certainly 
drift.  But  I  cannot  feel  that  it  is  possible 
to  do  much  good  by  a  ready-made  method  of 
any  kind.  Let  the  actor  be  taught  how  to 
breathe,  how  to  articulate,  let  his  voice  be 
trained  to  express  what  he  wants  to  express, 
and  then  let  him  be  made  to  feel  something 
of  what  verse  means  by  being  verse.  Let 
him,  by  all  means,  study  one  of  Mr.  Yeats' 
readings,  interpreted  to  him  by  means  of 

180 


The  Speaking  of  Verse 

notes;  it  will  teach  him  to  unlearn  something 
and  to  learn  something  more.  But  then  let 
him  forget  his  notes  and  Mr.  Yeats'  method, 
if  he  is  to  make  verse  live  on  the  stage. 


181 


GREAT  ACTING  IN  ENGLISH 

WHY  is  it  that  we  have  at  the  present  mo- 
ment no  great  acting  in  England?  We  can 
remember  it  in  our  own  time,  in  Irving,  who 
was  a  man  of  individual  genius.  In  him  it 
was  the  expression  of  a  romantic  tempera- 
ment, really  Cornish,  that  is,  Celtic,  which 
had  been  cultivated  like  a  rare  plant,  in  a 
hothouse.  Irving  was  an  incomparable 
orchid,  a  thing  beautiful,  lonely,  and  not 
quite  normal.  We  have  one  actress  now  liv- 
ing, an  exception  to  every  rule,  in  whom  a 
rare  and  wandering  genius  comes  and  goes: 
I  mean,  of  course,  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell. 
She  enchants  us,  from  time  to  time,  with 
divine  or  magical  improvisations.  We  have 
actresses  who  have  many  kinds  of  charm, 
actors  who  have  many  kinds  of  useful  talent ; 
but  have  we  in  our  whole  island  two  actors 
capable  of  giving  so  serious,  so  intelligent, 
so  carefully  finished,  so  vital  an  interpreta- 
tion of  Shakespeare,  or,  indeed,  of  render- 

182 


Great  Acting  in  English 

ing  any  form  of  poetic  drama  on  the  stage, 
as  the  Englishman  and  Englishwoman  who 
came  to  us  in  1907  from  America,  in  the 
guise  of  Americans:  Julia  Marlowe  and 
Edward  Sothern? 

The  business  of  the  manager,  who  in  most 
cases  is  also  the  chief  actor,  is  to  produce  a 
concerted  action  between  his  separate  play- 
ers, as  the  conductor  does  between  the  in- 
struments in  his  orchestra.  If  he  does  not 
bring  them  entirely  under  his  influence,  if 
he  (because,  like  the  conductor  of  a  pot- 
house band,  he  himself  is  the  first  fiddle) 
does  not  subordinate  himself  as  carefully 
to  the  requirements  of  the  composition,  the 
result  will  be  worthless  as  a  whole,  no  mat- 
ter what  individual  talents  may  glitter  out 
of  it.  What  should  we  say  if  the  first  fiddle 
insisted  on  having  a  cadenza  to  himself  in 
the  course  of  every  dozen  bars  of  the  music? 
What  should  we  say  if  he  cut  the  best  parts 
of  the  'cellos,  in  order  that  they  might  not 
add  a  mellowness  which  would  slightly  veil 
the  acuteness  of  his  own  notes?  What  should 
we  say  if  he  rearranged  the  composer's 
183 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

score  for  the  convenience  of  his  own  orches- 
tra? What  should  we  say  if  he  left  out  a 
beautiful  passage  on  the  horn  because  he 
had  not  got  one  of  the  two  or  three  per- 
fectly accomplished  horn-players  in  Europe? 
What  should  we  say  if  he  altered  the  time 
of  one  movement  in  order  to  make  room  for 
another,  in  which  he  would  himself  be  more 
prominent?  What  should  we  say  if  the  con- 
ductor of  an  orchestra  committed  a  single 
one  of  these  criminal  absurdities?  The 
musical  public  would  rise  against  him  as  one 
man,  the  pedantic  critics  and  the  young  men 
who  smoke  as  they  stand  on  promenade 
floors.  And  yet  this,  nothing  more  nor  less, 
is  done  on  the  stage  of  the  theatre  whenever 
a  Shakespeare  play,  or  any  serious  work  of 
dramatic  art,  is  presented  with  any  sort  of 
public  appeal. 

In  the  case  of  music,  fortunately,  some- 
thing more  than  custom  forbids:  the  nature 
of  music  forbids.  But  the  play  is  at  the 
mercy  of  the  actor-manager,  and  the  actor- 
manager  has  no  mercy.  In  England  a 
serious  play,  above  all  a  poetic  play,  is  not 

184 


Great  Acting  in  English 

put  on  by  any  but  small,  unsuccessful,  more 
or  less  private  and  unprofessional  people 
with  any  sort  of  reverence  for  art,  beauty, 
or,  indeed,  for  the  laws  and  conditions  of  the 
drama  which  is  literature  as  well  as  drama. 
Personal  vanity  and  the  pecuniary  necessity 
of  long  runs  are  enough  in  themselves  to 
account  for  the  failure  of  most  attempts  to 
combine  Shakespeare  with  show,  poetry  with 
the  box-office.  Or  is  there  in  our  actor- 
managers  a  lack  of  this  very  sense  of  what 
is  required  in  the  proper  rendering  of  imag- 
inative work  on  the  stage? 

It  is  in  the  staging  and  acting,  the  whole 
performance  and  management,  of  such  typi- 
cal plays  of  Shakespeare  as  "Hamlet/* 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  and  "  Twelfth  Night " 
that  Mr.  Sothern  and  Miss  Marlowe  have 
shown  the  whole  extent  of  their  powers,  and 
have  read  us  the  lesson  we  most  needed.  The 
mission  of  these  two  guests  has  been  to  show 
us  what  we  have  lost  on  our  stage  and  what 
we  have  forgotten  in  our  Shakespeare.  And 
first  of  all  I  would  note  the  extraordinary 
novelty  and  life  which  they  give  to  each  play 

185 


flays,  Acting,  and  Music 

as  a  whole  by  their  way  of  setting  it  in 
action.  I  have  always  felt  that  a  play  of 
Shakespeare,  seen  on  the  stage,  should  give 
one  the  same  kind  of  impression  as  when 
one  is  assisting  at  "a  solemn  music."  The 
rhythm  of  Shakespeare's  art  is  not  funda- 
mentally different  from  that  of  Beethoven, 
and  "  Romeo  and  Juliet "  is  a  suite,  "  Ham- 
let" a  symphony.  To  act  either  of  these 
plays  with  whatever  qualities  of  another 
kind,  and  to  fail  in  producing  this  musical 
rhythm  from  beginning  to  end,  is  to  fail  in 
the  very  foundation.  Here  the  music  was 
unflawed;  there  were  no  digressions,  no  ec- 
centricities, no  sacrifice  to  the  actor.  This 
astonishing  thing  occurred :  that  a  play  was 
presented  for  its  own  sake,  with  reverence, 
not  with  ostentation;  for  Shakespeare's  sake, 
not  for  the  actor-manager's. 

And  from  this  intelligent,  unostentatious 
way  of  giving  Shakespeare  there  come  to 
us,  naturally,  many  lessons.  Until  I  saw 
this  performance  of  "  Romeo  and  Juliet "  I 
thought  there  was  rhetoric  in  the  play,  as 
well  as  the  natural  poetry  of  drama.  But 
186 


Great  Acting  in  English 

I  see  that  it  only  needs  to  be  acted  with 
genius  and  intelligence,  and  the  poetry  con- 
sumes the  rhetoric.  I  never  knew  before 
that  this  play  was  so  near  to  life,  or  that 
every  beauty  in  it  could  be  made  so  inevit- 
ably human.  And  this  is  because  no  one  else 
has  rendered,  with  so  deep  a  truth,  with  so 
beautiful  a  fidelity,  all  that  is  passionate  and 
desperate  and  an  ecstatic  agony  in  this 
tragic  love  which  glorifies  and  destroys 
Juliet.  The  decorative  Juliet  of  the  stage 
we  know,  the  lovely  picture,  the  ingenue, 
the  prattler  of  pretty  phrases ;  but  this  mys- 
terious, tragic  child,  whom  love  has  made 
wise  in  making  her  a  woman,  is  unknown  to 
us  outside  Shakespeare,  and  perhaps  even 
there.  Mr.  Sothern's  Romeo  has  an  exquis- 
ite passion,  young  and  extravagant  as  a 
lover's,  and  is  alive.  But  Miss  Marlowe  is 
not  only  lovely  and  pathetic  as  Juliet;  she  is 
Juliet.  I  would  not  say  that  Mr.  Sothern's 
Hamlet  is  the  only  Hamlet,  for  there  are, 
still,  no  doubt,  "  points  in  Hamlet's  soul  un- 
seized  by  the  Germans  yet."  Yet  what  a 
Hamlet!  How  majestical,  how  simple,  how 
187 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

much  a  poet  and  a  gentleman!  To  what 
depth  he  suffers !  How  magnificently  he  in- 
terprets, in  the  crucifixion  of  his  own  soul, 
the  main  riddles  of  the  universe !  In  "  Ham- 
let," too,  I  saw  deeper  meanings  than  I  had 
ever  seen  in  the  play  when  it  was  acted.  Mr. 
Sothern  was  the  only  quite  sane  Hamlet; 
his  madness  is  all  the  outer  coverings  of 
wisdom;  there  was  nothing  fantastic  in  his 
grave,  subdued,  powerful,  and  piteous 
representation,  in  which  no  symbol,  no 
metaphysical  Faust,  no  figment  of  a 
German  brain,  loomed  before  us,  but 
a  man,  more  to  be  pitied  and  not  less 
to  be  honoured  than  any  man  in  Elsi- 
nore.  I  have  seen  romantic,  tragic,  excep- 
tional Hamlets,  the  very  bells  on  the  cap  of 
"  Fortune's  fool."  But  at  last  I  have  seen 
the  man  himself,  as  Shakespeare  saw  him 
living,  a  gentleman,  as  well  as  a  philosopher, 
a  nature  of  fundamental  sincerity;  no  mel- 
ancholy clown,  but  the  greatest  of  all  critics 
of  life.  And  the  play,  with  its  melodrama 
and  its  lyrical  ecstasy,  moved  before  one's 
eyes  like  a  religious  service. 
188 


Great  Acting  in   English 

How  is  it  that  we  get  from  the  acting  and 
management  of  these  two  actors  a  result 
which  no  one  in  England  has  ever  been  able 
to  get?  Well,  in  the  first  place,  as  I  have 
said,  they  have  the  odd  caprice  of  preferring 
Shakespeare  to  themselves;  the  odd  convic- 
tion that  fidelity  to  Shakespeare  will  give 
them  the  best  chance  of  doing  great  things 
themselves.  Nothing  is  accidental,  every- 
thing obeys  a  single  intention;  and  what, 
above  all,  obeys  that  intention  is  the  quality 
of  inspiration,  which  is  never  absent  and 
never  uncontrolled.  Intention  without  the 
power  of  achievement  is  almost  as  lament- 
able a  thing  as  achievement  not  directed  by 
intention.  Now  here  are  two  players  in 
whom  technique  has  been  carried  to  a  su- 
preme point.  There  is  no  actor  on  our  stage 
who  can  speak  either  English  or  verse  as 
these  two  American  actors  can.  It  is  on  this 
preliminary  technique,  this  power  of  using 
speech  as  one  uses  the  notes  of  a  musical 
instrument,  that  all  possibility  of  great  act- 
ing depends.  Who  is  there  that  can  give  us, 
not  the  external  gesture,  but  the  inner  mean- 
189 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ing,  of  some  beautiful  and  subtle  passage  in 
Shakespeare?  One  of  our  actors  will  give  it 
sonorously,  as  rhetoric,  and  another  eagerly, 
as  passionate  speech,  but  no  one  with  the 
precise  accent  of  a  man  who  is  speaking  his 
thoughts,  which  is  what  Shakespeare  makes 
his  characters  do  when  he  puts  his  loveliest 
poetry  into  their  mouths.  Look  at  Mr. 
Sothern  when  he  gives  the  soliloquy  "  To 
be  or  not  to  be,"  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
hear  spoken  to  the  public  in  one  or  another 
of  many  rhetorical  manners.  Mr.  Sothern's 
Hamlet  curls  himself  up  in  a  chair,  exactly 
as  sensitive  reflective  people  do  when  they 
want  to  make  their  bodies  comfortable  be- 
fore setting  their  minds  to  work ;  and  he  lets 
you  overhear  his  thoughts.  Every  soliloquy 
of  Shakespeare  is  meant  to  be  overheard, 
and  just  so  casually.  To  render  this  on  the 
stage  requires,  first,  an  understanding  of 
what  poetry  is;  next,  a  perfect  capacity  of 
producing  by  the  sound  and  intonation  of 
the  voice  the  exact  meaning  of  those  words 
and  cadences.  Who  is  there  on  our  stage 
who  has  completely  mastered  those  two  first 
190 


Great  Acting  in  English 

requirements  of  acting?  No  one  now  acting 
in  English,  except  Julia  Marlowe  and  Ed- 
ward Sothern. 

What  these  two  players  do  is  to  give  us, 
not  the  impression  which  we  get  when  we 
see  and  admire  fine  limitations,  but  the  im- 
pression which  we  get  from  real  people  who, 
when  they  speak  in  verse,  seem  to  be  speak- 
ing merely  the  language  of  their  own  hearts. 
They  give  us  every  character  in  the  round, 
whereas  with  our  actors  we  see  no  more  than 
profiles.  Look,  for  contrast,  at  the  Malvolio 
of  Mr.  Sothern.  It  is  an  elaborate  travesty, 
done  in  a  disguise  like  the  solemn  dandy's 
head  of  Disraeli.  He  acts  with  his  eyelids, 
which  move  while  all  the  rest  of  the  face  is 
motionless ;  with  his  pursed,  reticent  mouth, 
with  his  primi  and  pompous  gestures;  with 
that  self -consciousness  which  brings  all  Mal- 
volio's  troubles  upon  him.  It  is  a 
fantastic,  tragically  comic  thing,  done 
with  rare  calculation,  and  it  has  its 
formal,  almost  cruel  share  in  the  immense 
gaiety  of  the  piece.  The  play  is  great  and 
wild,  a  mockery  and  a  happiness;  and  it  is 
191 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

all  seen  and  not  interpreted,  but  the  mystery 
of  it  deepened,  in  the  clown's  song  at  the 
end,  which,  for  once,  has  been  allowed  its 
full  effect,  not  theatrical,  but  of  pure  imag- 
ination. 

So  far  I  have  spoken  only  of  those  first 
requirements,  those  elementary  principles  of 
acting,  which  we  ought  to  be  able  to  take 
for  granted;  only  in  England,  we  cannot. 
These  once  granted,  the  individual  work  of 
the  actor  begins,  his  power  to  create  with 
the  means  at  his  disposal.  Let  us  look,  then, 
a  little  more  closely  at  Miss  Marlowe.  I 
have  spoken  of  her  Juliet,  which  is  no  doubt 
her  finest  part.  But  now  look  at  her  Ophelia. 
It  is  not,  perhaps,  so  great  a  triumph  as  her 
Juliet,  and  merely  for  the  reason  that  there 
is  little  in  Ophelia  but  an  image  of  some 
beautiful  bright  thing  broken.  Yet  the  mad 
scene  will  be  remembered  among  all  other 
renderings  for  its  edged  lightness,  the  quite 
simple  poetry  it  makes  of  madness;  above 
all,  the  natural  pity  which  comes  into  it  from 
a  complete  abandonment  to  what  is  essence, 
and  not  mere  decoration,  in  the  spoiled  brain 
192 


Great  Acting  in  English 

of  this  kind,  loving  and  will-less  woman. 
She  suffers,  and  is  pitifully  unaware  of  it, 
there  before  you,  the  very  soul  naked  and 
shameless  with  an  innocence  beyond  inno- 
cence. She  makes  the  rage  and  tenderness 
of  Hamlet  towards  her  a  credible  thing. 

In  Juliet  Miss  Marlowe  is  ripe  humanity, 
in  Ophelia  that  same  humanity  broken  down 
from  within.  As  Viola  in  "  Twelfth  Night " 
she  is  the  woman  let  loose,  to  be  bewitching 
in  spite  of  herself;  and  here  again  her  art  is 
tested,  and  triumphs,  for  she  is  bewitching, 
and  never  trespasses  into  jauntiness  on  the 
one  hand,  or,  on  the  other,  into  that  modern 
sentiment  which  the  theatre  has  accustomed 
itself  to  under  the  name  of  romance.  She 
is  serious,  with  a  calm  and  even  simplicity, 
to  which  everything  is  a  kind  of  child's  play, 
putting  no  unnecessary  pathos  into  a  matter 
destined  to  come  right  in  the  end.  And  so 
her  delicate  and  restrained  gaiety  in  mas- 
querade interprets  perfectly,  satisfies  every 
requirement,  of  what  for  the  moment  is 
whimsical  in  Shakespeare's  art. 

Now  turn  from  Shakespeare,  and  see  what 
193 


Plays,  'Acting,  and  Music 

can  be  done  with  the  modern  make-believe. 
Here,  in  "  Jeanne  d' Arc,"  is  a  recent  Ameri- 
can melodrama,  written  ambitiously,  in  verse 
which  labours  to  be  poetry.  The  subject 
was  made  for  Miss  Marlowe,  but  the  play 
was  made  for  effect,  and  it  is  lamentable  to 
see  her,  in  scenes  made  up  of  false  sentiment 
and  theatrical  situations,  trying  to  do  what 
she  is  ready  and  able  to  do;  what,  indeed, 
some  of  the  scenes  give  her  the  chance  to  be : 
the  little  peasant  girl,  perplexed  by  visions 
and  possessed  by  them,  and  also  the  peasant 
saint,  too  simple  to  know  that  she  is  heroic. 
Out  of  a  play  of  shreds  and  patches  one  re- 
members only  something  which  has  given  it 
its  whole  value:  the  vital  image  of  a  divine 
child,  a  thing  of  peace  and  love,  who  makes 
war  angelically. 

Yet  even  in  this  play  there  was  ambition 
and  an  aim.  Turn,  last  of  all,  to  a  piece 
which  succeeded  with  London  audiences  bet- 
ter than  Shakespeare,  a  burlesque  of  Ameri- 
can origin,  called  "When  Knighthood  was 
in  Flower."  Here  too  I  seemed  to  discern  a 
lesson  for  the  English  stage.  Even  through 

194: 


Great  Acting  in   English 

the  silly  disguises  of  this  inconceivable  pro- 
duction, which  pleased  innocent  London  as 
it  had  pleased  indifferent  New  York,  one 
felt  a  certain  lilt  and  go,  a  touch  of  nature 
among  the  fool's  fabric  of  the  melodrama, 
which  set  the  action  far  above  our  steady 
practitioners  in  the  same  art  of  sinking. 
And,  above  all,  a  sense  of  parody  pierced 
through  words  and  actions,  commenting  wit- 
tily on  the  nonsense  of  romance  which  so 
many  were  so  willing  to  take  seriously.  She 
was  a  live  thing,  defiantly  and  gaily  con- 
scious of  every  absurdity  with  which  she  in- 
dulged the  babyish  tastes  of  one  more  public. 
An  actor  or  actress  who  is  limited  by  tal- 
ent, personality,  or  preference  to  a  single 
kind  of  role  is  not  properly  an  artist  at  all. 
It  is  the  curse  of  success  that,  in  any  art,  a 
man  who  has  pleased  the  public  in  any  single 
thing  is  called  upon,  if  he  would  turn  it  into 
money,  to  repeat  it,  as  exactly  as  he  can,  as 
often  as  he  can.  If  he  does  so,  he  is,  again, 
not  an  artist.  It  is  the  business  of  every 
kind  of  artist  to  be  ceaselessly  creative,  and, 
above  all,  not  to  repeat  himself.  When  I 
195 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

have  seen  Miss  Marlowe  as  Juliet,  as  Ophe- 
lia, and  as  Viola,  I  am  content  to  have  seen 
her  also  in  a  worthless  farce,  because  she 
showed  me  that  she  could  go  without  vul- 
garity, lightly,  safely,  through  a  part  that 
she  despised :  she  did  not  spoil  it  out  of  self- 
respect;  out  of  a  rarer  self-respect  she  car- 
ried it  through  without  capitulating  to  it. 
Then  I  hear  of  her  having  done  Lady 
Teazle  and  Imogen,  the  Fiammetta  of  Ca- 
tulle  Mendes  and  the  Salome  of  Haupt- 
mann;  I  do  not  know  even  the  names  of  half 
the  parts  she  has  played,  but  I  can  imagine 
her  playing  them  all,  not  with  the  same 
poignancy  and  success,  but  with  a  skill 
hardly  varying  from  one  to  another.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  she  has  a  natural  genius  for 
acting.  This  genius  she  has  so  carefully  and 
so  subtly  trained  that  it  may  strike  you  at 
first  sight  as  not  being  genius  at  all;  because 
it  is  so  much  on  the  level,  because  there  are 
no  fits  and  starts  in  it;  because,  in  short,  it 
has  none  of  the  attractiveness  of  excess.  It 
is  by  excess  that  we  for  the  most  part  dis- 
tinguish what  seems  to  us  genius;  and  it  is 
196 


Great  Acting  in  English 

often  by  its  excess  that  genius  first  really 
shows  itself.  But  the  rarest  genius  is  with- 
out excess,  and  may  seem  colourless  in  his 
perfection,  as  Giorgione  seems  beside  Titian. 
But  Giorgione  will  always  be  the  greater. 

I  quoted  to  an  old  friend  and  fervent 
admirer  of  Miss  Marlowe  the  words  of 
Bacon  which  were  always  on  the  lips  of  Poe 
and  of  Baudelaire,  about  the  "strangeness 
in  the  proportions"  of  all  beauty.  She 
asked  me,  in  pained  surprise,  if  I  saw  any- 
thing strange  in  Miss  Marlowe.  If  I  had 
not,  she  would  have  meant  nothing  for  me, 
as  the  "  faultily  faultless  "  person,  the  Mrs. 
Kendal,  means  nothing  to  me.  The  confu- 
sion can  easily  be  made,  and  there  will  prob- 
ably always  be  people  who  will  prefer  Mrs. 
Kendal  to  Miss  Marlowe,  as  there  are  those 
who  will  think  Mme.  Melba  a  greater  ope- 
ratic singer  than  Mme.  Calve.  What  Miss 
Marlowe  has  is  a  great  innocence,  which  is 
not,  like  Duse's,  the  innocence  of  wisdom, 
and  a  childish  and  yet  wild  innocence, 
such  as  we  might  find  in  a  tamed 
wild  beast,  in  whom  there  would  al- 
197 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ways  be  a  charm  far  beyond  that  of  the 
domestic  creature  who  has  grown  up  on 
our  hearth.  This  wildness  comes  to  her  per- 
haps from  Pan,  forces  of  nature  that  are  al- 
ways somewhere  stealthily  about  the  world, 
hidden  in  the  blood,  unaccountable,  uncon- 
scious ;  without  which  we  are  tame  christened 
things,  fit  for  cloisters.  Duse  is  the  soul 
made  flesh,  Re  jane  the  flesh  made  Parisian, 
Sarah  Bernhardt  the  flesh  and  the  devil ;  but 
Julia  Marlowe  is  the  joy  of  life,  the  pleni- 
tude of  sap  in  the  tree. 

The  personal  appeal  of  Mr.  Sothern  and 
of  Miss  Marlowe  is  very  different.  In  his 
manner  of  receiving  applause  there  is  some- 
thing almost  resentful,  as  if,  being  satisfied 
to  do  what  he  chooses  to  do,  and  in  his  own 
way,  he  were  indifferent  to  the  opinion  of 
others.  It  is  not  the  actor's  attitude;  but 
what  a  relief  from  the  general  subservience 
of  that  attitude!  In  Miss  Marlowe  there  is 
something  young,  warm,  and  engaging,  a 
way  of  giving  herself  wholly  to  the  plea- 
sure of  pleasing,  to  which  the  footlights  are 
scarcely  a  barrier.  As  if  unconsciously,  she 
198 


Great  Acting  in  English 

fills  and  gladdens  you  with  a  sense  of  the 
single  human  being  whom  she  is  represent- 
ing. And  there  is  her  strange  beauty,  in 
which  the  mind  and  the  senses  have 
an  equal  part,  and  which  is  full  of 
savour  and  grace,  alive  to  the  finger- 
tips. Yet  it  is  not  with  these  per- 
sonal qualities  that  I  am  here  chiefly  con- 
cerned. What  I  want  to  emphasise  is  the 
particular  kind  of  lesson  which  this  acting, 
so  essentially  English,  though  it  comes  to 
us  as  if  set  free  by  America,  should  have  for 
all  who  are  at  all  seriously  considering  the 
lamentable  condition  of  our  stage  in  the 
present  day.  We  have  nothing  like  it  in 
England,  nothing  on  the  same  level,  no  such 
honesty  and  capacity  of  art,  no  such  worthy 
results.  Are  we  capable  of  realising  the  dif- 
ference? If  not,  Julia  Marlowe  and  Ed- 
ward Sothern  will  have  come  to  England  in 
vain. 


199 


A  THEORY  OF   THE   STAGE 

LIFE  and  beauty  are  the  body  and  soul  of 
great  drama.  Mix  the  two  as  you  will,  so 
long  as  both  are  there,  resolved  into  a  single 
substance.  But  let  there  be,  in  the  making, 
two  ingredients,  and  while  one  is  poetry, 
and  comes  bringing  beauty,  the  other  is  a 
violent  thing  which  has  been  scornfully 
called  melodrama,  and  is  the  emphasis  of 
action.  The  greatest  plays  are  melodrama 
by  their  skeleton,  and  poetry  by  the  flesh 
which  clothes  that  skeleton. 

The  foundation  of  drama  is  that  part  of 
the  action  which  can  be  represented  in  dumb 
show.  Only  the  essential  parts  of  action  can 
be  represented  without  words,  and  you 
would  set  the  puppets  vainly  to  work  on 
any  material  but  that  which  is  common  to 
humanity.  The  permanence  of  a  drama 
might  be  tested  by  the  continuance  and  uni- 
versality of  its  appeal  when  played  silently 
in  gestures.  I  have  seen  the  test  applied, 
200 


A   Theory  of  the  Stage, 

Companies  of  marionette  players  still  go 
about  the  villages  of  Kent,  and  among  their 
stock  pieces  is  "Arden  of  Feversham,"  the 
play  which  Shakespeare  is  not  too  great  to 
have  written,  at  some  moment  when  his  right 
hand  knew  not  what  his  left  hand  was  doing. 
Well,  that  great  little  play  can  hold  the 
eyes  of  every  child  and  villager,  as  the  pup- 
pets enact  it;  and  its  power  has  not  gone 
out  of  it  after  three  centuries.  Dumb  show 
apes  the  primal  forces  of  nature,  and  is  in- 
articulate, as  they  are;  until  relief  gives 
words.  When  words  come,  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  they  should  not  be  in  verse,  for  only 
in  verse  can  we  render  what  is  deepest  in 
humanity  of  the  utmost  beauty.  Nothing 
but  beauty  should  exist  on  the  stage.  Vis- 
ible beauty  comes  with  the  ballet,  an  abstract 
thing;  gesture  adds  pantomime,  with  which 
drama  begins ;  and  then  words  bring  in  the 
speech  by  which  life  tries  to  tell  its  secret. 
Because  poetry,  speaking  its  natural  lan- 
guage of  verse,  can  let  out  more  of  that 
secret  than  prose,  the  great  drama  of  the 
past  has  been  mainly  drama  in  verse.  The 
201 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

modern  desire  to  escape  from  form,  and  to 
get  at  a  raw  thing  which  shall  seem  like  what 
we  know  of  the  outside  of  nature,  has  led 
our  latest  dramatists  to  use  prose  in  prefer- 
ence to  verse,  which  indeed  is  more  within 
their  limits.  It  is  Ibsen  who  has  seemed  to 
do  most  to  justify  the  use  of  prose,  for  he 
carries  his  psychology  far  with  it.  Yet  it 
remains  prose,  a  meaner  method,  a  limiting 
restraint,  and  his  drama  a  thing  less  funda- 
mental than  the  drama  of  the  poets.  Only 
one  modern  writer  has  brought  something 
which  is  almost  the  equivalent  of  poetry  out 
of  prose  speech:  Tolstoi,  in  "  The  Powers  of 
Darkness."  The  play  is  horrible  and  un- 
couth, but  it  is  illuminated  by  a  great  inner 
light.  There  is  not  a  beautiful  word  in  it, 
but  it  is  filled  with  beauty.  And  that  is  be- 
cause Tolstoi  has  the, vision  which  may  be 
equally  that  of  the  poet  and  of  the  prophet. 
It  is  often  said  that  the  age  of  poetry  is 
over,  and  that  the  great  forms  of  the  future 
must  be  in  prose.  That  is  the  "exquisite 
reason"  of  those  whom  the  gods  have  not 
made  poetical.  It  is  like  saying  that  there 

202 


A  Theory   of  the  Stage. 

will  be  no  more  music,  or  that  love  is  out  of 
date.  Forms  change,  but  not  essence;  and 
Whitman  points  the  way,  not  to  prose,  but 
to  a  poetry  which  shall  take  in  wider  regions 
of  the  mind. 

Yet,  though  it  is  by  its  poetry  that,  as 
Lamb  pointed  out,  a  play  of  Shakespeare 
differs  from  a  play  of  Banks  or  Lillo,  the 
poetry  is  not  more  essential  to  its  making 
than  the  living  substance,  the  melodrama. 
Poets  who  have  written  plays  for  reading 
have  wasted  their  best  opportunities.  Why 
wear  chains  for  dancing?  The  limitations 
necessary  to  the  drama  before  it  can  be  fitted 
to  the  stage  are  but  hindrances  and  disabili- 
ties to  the  writer  of  a  book.  Where  can  we 
find  more  spilt  wealth  than  in  the  plays  of 
Swinburne,  where  all  the  magnificent 
speech  builds  up  no  structure,  but  wavers  in 
orchestral  floods,  without  beginning  or  end- 
ing? It  has  been  said  that  Shakespeare  will 
sacrifice  his  drama  to  his  poetry,  and  even 
"Hamlet"  has  been  quoted  against  him. 
But  let  "Hamlet"  be  rightly  acted,  and 
whatever  has  seemed  mere  lingering  medi- 

203 


Plays,,  Acting,  and  Music 

tation  will  be  recognised  as  a  part  of  that 
thought  which  makes  or  waits  on  action.  If 
poetry  in  Shakespeare  may  sometimes  seem 
to  delay  action,  it  does  but  deepen  it.  The 
poetry  is  the  life  blood,  or  runs  through  it. 
Only  bad  actors  and  managers  think  that 
by  stripping  the  flesh  from  the  skeleton  they 
can  show  us  a  more  living  body.  The  out- 
lines of  "Hamlet"  are  crude,  irresistible 
melodrama,  still  irresistible  to  the  gallery; 
and  the  greatness  of  the  play,  though  it 
comes  to  us  by  means  of  the  poetry,  comes 
to  us  legitimately,  as  a  growth  out  of  melo- 
drama. 

The  failure,  the  comparative  failure,  of 
every  contemporary  dramatist,  however  far 
he  may  go  in  one  direction  or  another,  comes 
from  his  neglect  of  one  or  another  of  these 
two  primary  and  essential  requirements. 
There  is,  at  this  time,  a  more  serious  dra- 
matic movement  in  Germany  than  in  any 
other  country;  with  mechanicians,  like  Su- 
dermann,  as  accomplished  as  the  best  of 
ours,  and  dramatists  who  are  also  poets,  like 
Hauptmann.  I  do  not  know  them  well 

204 


A   Theory   of  the  Stage. 

enough  to  bring  them  into  my  argument, 
but  I  can  see  that  in  Germany,  whatever 
the  actual  result,  the  endeavour  is  in  the 
right  direction.  Elsewhere,  how  often  do 
we  find  even  so  much  as  this,  in  more  than 
a  single  writer  here  and  there?  Consider 
Ibsen,  who  is  the  subtlest  master  of  the  stage 
since  Sophocles.  At  his  best  he  has  a  firm 
hold  on  structural  melodrama,  he  is  a  mar- 
vellous analyst  of  life,  he  is  the  most  in- 
genious of  all  the  playwrights;  but  ask  him 
for  beauty  and  he  will  give  you  a  phrase, 
"vine-leaves  in  the  hair"  or  its  equivalent; 
one  of  the  cliches  of  the  minor  poet.  In 
the  end  beauty  revenged  itself  upon  him  by 
bringing  him  to  a  no-man's  land  where  there 
were  clouds  and  phantasms  that  he  could  no 
longer  direct. 

Maeterlinck  began  by  a  marvellous  in- 
stinct, with  plays  "for  marionettes,"  and, 
having  discovered  a  forgotten  secret,  grew 
tired  of  limiting  himself  within  its  narrow 
circle,  and  came  outside  his  magic.  "  Monna 
Vanna  "  is  an  attempt  to  be  broadly  human 
on  the  part  of  a  man  whose  gift  is  of  an- 

205 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

other  kind:  a  visionary  of  the  moods.  His 
later  speech,  like  his  later  dramatic  material, 
is  diluted;  he  becomes,  in  the  conventional 
sense,  eloquent,  which  poetry  never  is.  But 
he  has  brought  back  mystery  to  the  stage, 
which  has  been  banished,  or  retained  in  exile, 
among  phantasmagoric  Faust-lights.  The 
dramatist  of  the  future  will  have  more  to 
learn  from  Maeterlinck  than  from  any  other 
playwright  of  our  time.  He  has  seen  his 
puppets  against  the  permanent  darkness, 
which  we  had  cloaked  with  light;  he  has 
given  them  supreme  silences. 

In  d'Annunzio  we  have  an  art  partly 
shaped  by  Maeterlinck,  in  which  all  is  atmos- 
phere, and  a  home  for  sensations  which 
never  become  vital  passions.  The  roses  in 
the  sarcophagus  are  part  of  the  action  in 
"Francesca,"  and  in  "The  Dead  City"  the 
whole  action  arises  out  of  the  glorious  mis- 
chief hidden  like  a  deadly  fume  in  the  grave 
of  Agamemnon.  Speech  and  drama  are 
there,  clothing  but  not  revealing  one  an- 
other; the  speech  always  a  lovely  veil,  never 
a  human  outline. 

We  have  in  England  one  man,  and  one 

206 


A   Theory   of  the  Stage 

only,  who  has  some  public  claim  to  be  named 
with  these  artists,  though  his  aim  is  the  nega- 
tion of  art.  Mr.  Shaw  is  a  mind  without  a 
body,  a  whimsical  intelligence  without  a  soul. 
He  is  one  of  those  tragic  buffoons  who  play 
with  eternal  things,  not  only  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  crowd,  but  because  an  uneasy 
devil  capers  in  their  own  brains.  He  is  a 
merry  preacher,  a  petulant  critic,  a  great 
talker.  It  is  partly  because  he  is  an  Irish- 
man that  he  has  transplanted  the  art  of 
talking  to  the  soil  of  the  stage:  Sheridan, 
Wilde,  Shaw,  our  only  modern  comedians, 
all  Irishmen,  all  talkers.  It  is  by  his  aston- 
ishing skill  of  saying  everything  that  comes 
into  his  head,  with  a  spirit  really  intoxicat- 
ing, that  Mr.  Shaw  has  succeeded  in  holding 
the  stage  with  undramatic  plays,  in  which 
there  is  neither  life  nor  beauty.  Life  gives 
up  its  wisdom  only  to  reverence,  and  beauty 
is  jealous  of  neglected  altars.  But  those 
who  amuse  the  world,  no  matter  by  what 
means,  have  their  place  in  the  world  at  any 
given  moment.  Mr.  Shaw  is  a  clock  strik- 
ing the  hour. 

With  Mr.   Shaw  we  come  to  the  play 

207 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

which  is  prose,  and  nothing  but  prose.  The 
form  is  familiar  among  us,  though  it  is  cul- 
tivated with  a  more  instinctive  skill,  as  is 
natural,  in  France.  There  was  a  time,  not 
so  long  ago,  when  Dumas  fils  was  to  France 
what  Ibsen  afterwards  became  to  Europe, 
What  remains  of  him  now  is  hardly  more 
than  his  first  "fond  adventure"  the  su- 
premely playable  "Dame  aux  Camelias." 
The  other  plays  are  already  out  of  date, 
since  Ibsen;  the  philosophy  of  "Tue-la!" 
was  the  special  pleading  of  the  moment,  and 
a  drama  in  which  special  pleading,  and  not 
the  fundamental  "criticism  of  life,"  is  the 
dramatic  motive  can  never  outlast  its  tech- 
nique, which  has  also  died  with  the  coming 
of  Ibsen.  Better  technique,  perhaps,  than 
that  of  "La  Femme  de  Claude,"  but  with 
less  rather  than  more  weight  of  thought  be- 
hind it,  is  to  be  found  in  many  accomplished 
playwrights,  who  are  doing  all  sorts  of  in- 
teresting temporary  things,  excellently 
made  to  entertain  the  attentive  French  pub- 
lic with  a  solid  kind  of  entertainment.  Here, 
in  England,  we  have  no  such  folk  to  com- 

208 


A  Theory  of  the  Stage, 

mand ;  our  cleverest  playwrights,  apart  from 
Mr.  Shaw,  are  what  we  might  call  practi- 
tioners. There  is  Mr.  Pinero,  Mr.  Jones, 
Mr.  Grundy:  what  names  are  better  known, 
or  less  to  be  associated  with  literature? 
There  is  Anthony  Hope,  who  can  write,  and 
Mr.  Barrie  who  has  something  both  human 
and  humourous.  There  are  many  more 
names,  if  I  could  remember  them;  but  where 
is  the  serious  playwright?  Who  is  there  that 
can  be  compared  with  our  poets  or  our  nov- 
elists, not  only  with  a  Swinburne  or  a  Mere- 
dith, but,  in  a  younger  generation,  with  a 
Bridges  or  a  Conrad?  The  Court  Theatre 
has  given  us  one  or  two  good  realistic  plays, 
the  best  being  Mr.  Granville  Barker's,  be- 
sides giving  Mr.  Shaw  his  chance  in  Eng- 
land, after  he  had  had  and  taken  it  in  Amer- 
ica. But  is  there,  anywhere  but  in  Ireland, 
an  attempt  to  write  imaginative  literature 
in  the  form  of  drama?  The  Irish  Literary 
Theatre  has  already,  in  Mr.  Yeats  and  Mr. 
Synge,  two  notable  writers,  each  wholly  in- 
dividual, one  a  poet  in  verse,  the  other  a  poet 
in  prose.  Neither  has  yet  reached  the  pub- 
209 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

lie,  in  any  effectual  way,  or  perhaps  the  lim- 
its of  his  own  powers  as  a  dramatist.  Yet 
who  else  is  there  for  us  to  hope  in,  if  we 
are  to  have  once  more  an  art  of  the  stage, 
based  on  the  great  principles,  and  a  theatre 
in  which  that  art  can  be  acted? 

The  whole  universe  lies  open  to  the  poet 
who  is  also  a  dramatist,  affording  him  an 
incomparable  choice  of  subject.  Ibsen,  the 
greatest  of  the  playwrights  of  modern  life, 
narrowed  his  stage,  for  ingenious  plausible 
reasons  of  his  own,  to  the  four  walls  of  a 
house,  and,  at  his  best,  constrained  his  people 
to  talk  of  nothing  above  their  daily  occupa- 
tions. He  got  the  illusion  of  everyday  life, 
but  at  a  cruel  expense.  These  people,  until 
they  began  to  turn  crazy,  had  no  vision  be- 
yond their  eyesight,  and  their  thoughts 
never  went  deep  enough  to  need  a  better 
form  for  expression  than  they  could  find 
in  their  newspapers.  They  discussed  im- 
mortal problems  as  they  would  have  dis- 
cussed the  entries  in  their  ledger.  Think  for 
a  moment  how  the  peasants  speak  in  that 
play  of  Tolstoi's  which  I  have  called  the 

210 


A   Theory   of  the  Stage. 

only  modern  play  in  prose  which  contains 
poetry.  They  speak  as  Russians  speak, 
with  a  certain  childishness,  in  which  they 
are  more  primitive  than  our  more  civilised 
peasants.  But  the  speech  comes  from  deeper 
than  they  are  aware,  it  stumbles  into  a  reve- 
lation of  the  soul.  A  drunken  man  in  Tol- 
stoi has  more  wisdom  in  his  cups  than  all 
Ibsen's  strange  ladies  who  fumble  at  their 
lips  for  sea-magic. 

And  as  Tolstoi  found:  in  this  sordid  chaos 
material  for  tragedy  which  is  as  noble  as  the 
Greeks'  (a  like  horror  at  the  root  of  both,  a 
like  radiance  at  both  summits),  so  the  poet 
will  find  stories,  as  modern  as  this  if  he 
chooses,  from  which  he  can  take  the  same 
ingredients  for  his  art.  The  ingredients 
are  unchanging  since  "Prometheus";  no 
human  agony  has  ever  grown  old  or  lost  its 
pity  and  terror.  The  great  plays  of  the  past 
were  made  out  of  great  stories,  and  the  great 
stories  are  repeated  in  our  days  and  can  be 
heard  wherever  an  old  man  tells  us  a  little 
of  what  has  come  to  him  in  living.  Verse 
lends  itself  to  the  lifting  and  adequate  treat- 
211 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ment  of  the  primary  emotions,  because  it 
can  render  them  more  as  they  are  in  the  soul, 
not  being  tied  down  to  probable  words,  as 
prose  talk  is.  The  probable  words  of  prose 
talk  can  only  render  a  part  of  what  goes  on 
among  the  obscure  imageries  of  the  inner 
life;  for  who,  in  a  moment  of  crisis,  responds 
to  circumstances  or  destiny  with  an  adequate 
answer?  Poetry,  which  is  spoken  thought, 
or  the  speech  of  something  deeper  than 
thought,  may  let  loose  some  part  of  that 
answer  which  would  justify  the  soul,  if  it 
did  not  lie  dumb  upon  its  lips. 


THE   SICILIAN  ACTORS 


I  HAVE  been  seeing  the  Sicilian  actors 
in  London.  They  came  here  from  Paris, 
where,  I  read,  "la  passion  parait  deci- 
dement,"  to  a  dramatic  critic,  "  avoir  par- 
tout  ses  inconvenients,"  especially  on  the 
stage.  We  are  supposed  to  think  so  here, 
but  for  once  London  has  applauded  an 
acting  which  is  more  primitively  passionate 
than  anything  we  are  accustomed  to  on  our 
moderate  stage.  Some  of  it  was  spoken  in 
Italian,  some  in  the  Sicilian  dialect,  and  not 
many  in  the  English  part  of  the  audience 
could  follow  very  closely  the  words  as  they 
were  spoken.  Yet  so  marvellously  real  were 
these  stage  peasants,  so  clear  and  poignant 
their  gestures  and  actions,  that  words  seemed 
a  hardly  needless  accompaniment  to  so  evi- 
dent, exciting,  and  absorbing  a  form  of 

213 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

drama.  It  was  a  new  intoxication,  and 
people  went,  I  am  afraid,  as  to  a  wild- 
beast  show. 

It  was  really  nothing  of  the  kind,  though 
the  melodrama  was  often  very  crude ;  some- 
times, in  a  simple  way,  horrible.  But  it  was 
a  fierce  living  thing,  a  life  unknown  to  us 
in  the  North;  it  smouldered  like  the  vol- 
canoes of  the  South.  And  so  we  were 
seeing  a  new  thing  on  the  stage,  rendered 
by  actors  who  seemed,  for  the  most  part, 
scarcely  actors  at  all,  but  the  real  peasants; 
and,  above  all,  there  was  a  woman  of  genius, 
the  leader  of  the  company,  who  was  much 
more  real  than  reality. 

Mimi  Aguglia  has  studied  Duse,  for  her 
tones,  for  some  of  her  attitudes;  her  art  is 
more  nearly  the  art  of  Re  jane.  While  both 
of  these  are  great  artists,  she  is  an  impro- 
viser,  a  creature  of  wild  moods,  of  animal 
energies,  uncontrolled,  spontaneous.  She 
catches  you  in  a  fierce  caress,  like  a  tiger- 
cat.  She  gives  you,  as  in  "Malia,"  the 
whole  animal,  snarling,  striking,  suffering, 
all  the  pangs  of  the  flesh,  the  emotions  of 

214 


The  Sicilian  Actors 

fear  and  hate,  but  for  the  most  part  no 
more.  In  "  La  Folf  aa  "  she  can  be  piquant, 
passing  from  the  naughty  girl  of  the  first 
act,  with  her  delicious  airs  and  angers,  her 
tricks,  gambols,  petulances,  to  the  soured 
wife  of  the  second,  in  whom  a  kind  of  bad 
blood  comes  out,  turning  her  to  treacheries 
of  mere  spite,  until  her  husband  thrusts  her 
brutally  out  of  the  house,  where,  if  she  will, 
she  may  follow  her  lover.  Here,  where 
there  is  no  profound  passion  but  mean  quar- 
rels among  miserable  workers  in  salt-mines, 
she  is  a  noticeable  figure,  standing  out  from 
the  others,  and  setting  her  prim,  soubrette 
figure  in  motion  with  a  genuine  art,  quite 
personal  to  her.  But  to  see  her  after  the 
Santuzza  of  Duse,  in  Verga's  "Cavalleria 
Rusticana,"  is  to  realise  the  difference  be- 
tween this  art  of  the  animal  and  Duse's  art 
of  the  soul.  And  if  one  thinks  of  Re  jane's 
"  Sapho,"  the  difference  is  hardly  less, 
though  of  another  kind.  I  saw  Duse  for 
the  first  time  in  the  part  of  Santuzza,  and 
I  remember  to  this  day  a  certain  gentle  and 
pathetic  gesture  of  her  apparently  uncon- 

215 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

scious  hand,  turning  back  the  sleeve  of  her 
lover's  coat  over  his  wrist,  while  her  eyes 
fasten  on  his  eyes  in  a  great  thirst  for  what 
is  to  be  found  in  them.  The  Santuzza  of 
Mimi  Aguglia  is  a  stinging  thing  that  bites 
when  it  is  stepped  on.  There  is  no  love  in 
her  heart,  only  love  of  possession,  jealousy, 
an  unreasonable  hate;  and  she  is  not  truly 
pathetic  or  tragic  in  her  furious  wrestle  with 
her  lover  on  the  church  steps  or  in  her  plot 
against  him  which  sends  an  unanticipated 
knife  into  his  heart. 

Yet,  in  the  Mila  di  Codra  of  d'Annunzio's 
"  Figlia  di  Jorio  "  she  has  moments  of  abso- 
lute greatness.  Her  fear  in  the  cave,  before 
Lazaro  di  Roio,  is  the  most  ghastly  and  ac- 
curate rendering  of  that  sensation  that,  I 
am  sure,  has  been  seen  on  any  stage.  She 
flings  herself  upright  against  a  frame  of 
wood  on  which  the  woodcarver  has  left  his 
tools,  and  as  one  new  shudder  after  another 
sets  her  body  visibly  quaking,  some  of  the 
tools  drop  on  the  floor,  with  an  astonishing 
effect  on  the  nerves.  Her  face  contracts 
into  a  staring,  hopeless  grimace,  as  if  about 
216 


The  Sicilian  Actors 

to  utter  shrieks  which  cannot  get  past  her 
lips.  She  shivers  slowly  downwards  until 
she  sinks  on  her  rigid  heels  and  clasps  her 
knees  with  both  arms.  There,  in  the  corner, 
she  waits  in  twenty  several  anguishes,  while 
the  foul  old  man  tempts  her,  crawling  like 
a  worm,  nearer  and  nearer  to  her  on  the 
ground,  with  gestures  of  appeal  that  she 
repels  time  after  time,  with  some  shudder 
aside  of  her  crouched  body,  hopping  as  if  on 
all  fours  closer  into  the  corner.  The  scene 
is  terrible  in  its  scarcely  thinkable  distress, 
but  it  is  not  horrible,  as  some  would  have  it 
to  be.  Here,  with  her  means,  this  actress 
creates;  it  is  no  mean  copy  of  reality,  but 
fear  brought  to  a  kind  of  greatness,  so  com- 
pletely has  the  whole  being  passed  into  its 
possession. 

And  there  is  another  scene  in  which  she  is 
absolute  in  a  nobler  catastrophe.  In  her 
last  cry  before  she  is  dragged  to  the  stake, 
"  La  fiamma  e  bella !  la  fiamma  e  bella ! " 
d' Annunzio,  I  have  no  doubt,  meant  no  more 
than  the  obvious  rhetoric  suited  to  a  situa- 
tion of  heroism.  Out  of  his  rhetoric  this 
217 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

woman  has  created  the  horror  and  beauty  of 
a  supreme  irony  of  anguish.  She  has  given 
up  her  life  for  her  lover,  he  has  denied  and 
cursed  her  in  the  oblivion  of  the  draught 
that  should  have  been  his  death-drink,  her 
hands  have  been  clasped  with  the  wooden 
fetters  taken  off  from  his  hands,  and  her 
face  covered  with  the  dark  veil  he  had  worn, 
and  the  vile  howling  crowd  draws  her  back- 
ward towards  her  martyrdom.  Ornella  has 
saluted  her  sister  in  Christ;  she,  the  one  who 
knows  the  truth,  silent,  helping  her  to  die 
nobly.  And  now  the  woman,  having  willed 
beyond  the  power  of  mortal  flesh  to  endure 
an  anguish  that  now  flames  before  her  in  its 
supreme  reality,  strains  in  the  irrationality 
of  utter  fear  backward  into  the  midst  of 
those  clutching  hands  that  are  holding  her 
up  in  the  attitude  of  her  death,  and,  with  a 
shiver  in  which  the  soul,  succumbing  to  the 
body,  wrings  its  last  triumph  out  of  an 
ignominious  glory,  she  cries,  shrieking,  feel- 
ing the  flames  eternally  upon  her:  "La 
fiamma  e  bella!  la  fiamma  e  bella!"  and 
thereat  all  evil  seems  to  have  been  judged 

218 


The  Sicilian  Actors 

suddenly,  and  obliterated,  as  if  God  had 
laughed  once,  and  wiped  out  the  world. 

II 

Since  Charles  Lamb's  essay  "On  the 
Tragedies  of  Shakespeare,  considered  with 
reference  to  their  fitness  for  stage  repre- 
sentation," there  has  been  a  great  deal  of 
argument  as  to  whether  the  beauty  of  words, 
especially  in  verse,  is  necessarily  lost  on  the 
stage,  and  whether  a  well-constructed  play 
cannot  exist  by  itself,  either  in  dumb  show 
or  with  words  in  a  foreign  languge,  which 
we  may  not  understand.  The  acting,  by  the 
Sicilian  actors,  of  "La  Figlia  di  Jorio," 
seemed  to  me  to  do  something  towards  the 
solution  of  part  at  least  of  this  problem. 

The  play,  as  one  reads  it,  has  perhaps  less 
than  usual  of  the  beauty  which  d'Annunzio 
elaborates  in  his  dramatic  speech.  It  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  closer  to  nature,  carefully 
copied  from  the  speech  of  the  peasants  of 
the  Abruzzi,  and  from  what  remains  of  their 
folk-lore.  The  story  on  which  it  is  founded 
is  a  striking  one,  and  the  action  has,  even  in 
219 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

reading,  the  effect  of  a  melodrama.  Now 
see  it  on  the  stage,  acted  with  the  speed  and 
fury  of  these  actors.  Imagine  oneself  ig- 
norant of  the  language  and  of  the  play. 
Suddenly  the  words  have  become  unneces- 
sary; the  bare  outlines  stand  out,  perfectly 
explicit  in  gesture  and  motion;  the  scene 
passes  before  you  as  if  you  were  watching  it 
in  real  life;  and  this  primitively  passionate 
acting,  working  on  an  action  so  cunningly 
contrived  for  its  co-operation,  gives  us  at 
last  what  the  play,  as  we  read  it,  had  sug- 
gested to  us,  but  without  complete  convic- 
tion. The  beauty  of  the  speech  had  become 
a  secondary  matter,  or,  if  we  did  not  under- 
stand it,  the  desire  to  know  what  was  being 
said:  the  playwright  and  his  players  had 
eclipsed  the  poet,  the  visible  action  had  put 
out  the  calculated  cadences  of  the  verse. 
And  the  play,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  stage,  had  fulfilled  every  requirement, 
had  achieved  its  aim. 

And  still  the  question  remains :  how  much 
of  this  success  is  due  to  the  playwright's 
skill  or  to  the  skill  of  the  actors? 

220 


The  Sicilian  Actors 

How  is  it  that  in  this  play  the  actors 
obtain  a  fine  result,  act  on  a  higher 
level,  than  in  their  realistic  Sicilian  trag- 
edies? D'Annunzio  is  no  doubt  a  better 
writer  than  Capuana  or  Verga,  and  his  play 
is  finer  as  literature  than  "  Cavalleria  Rus- 
ticana  "  or  "  Malia."  But  is  it  great  poetry 
or  great  drama,  and  has  the  skilful  play- 
wright need  of  the  stage  and  of  actors  like 
these,  who  come  with  their  own  life  and  ways 
upon  it,  in  order  to  bring  the  men  and 
women  of  his  pages  to  life?  Can  it  be  said 
of  him  that  he  has  fulfilled  the  great  condi- 
tion of  poetic  drama,  that,  as  Coleridge  said, 
"dramatic  poetry  must  be  poetry  hid  in 
thought  and  passion — not  thought  or  pas- 
sion disguised  in  the  dress  of  poetry?" 

That  is  a  question  which  I  am  not  here 
concerned  to  answer.  Perhaps  I  have  al- 
ready answered  it.  Perhaps  Lamb  had  an- 
swered it  when  he  said,  of  a  performance 
of  Shakespeare  in  which  there  were  two 
great  actors,  that  "  it  seemed  to  embody  and 
realise  conceptions  which  had  hitherto  as- 
sumed no  distinct  shape,"  but  that,  "when 

221 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

the  novelty  is  past,  we  find  to  our  cost  that 
instead  of  realising  an  idea,  we  have  only 
materialised  and  brought  down  a  fine  vision 
to  the  standard  of  flesh  and  blood."  If 
that  is  true  of  Shakespeare,  the  greatest  of 
dramatic  poets,  how  far  is  it  from  the  im- 
pression which  I  have  described  in  speaking 
of  d'Annunzio.  What  fine  vision  was  there 
to  bring  down?  what  poetry  hid  in  thought 
or  passion  was  lost  to  us  in  its  passage 
across  the  stage? 

And  now  let  us  consider  the  play  in  which 
these  actors  have  found  their  finest  oppor- 
tunity for  abandoning  themselves  to  those 
instincts  out  of  which  they  have  made  their 
art.  "  Malia,"  a  Sicilian  play  of  Capuana, 
is  an  exhibition  of  the  witchcraft  of  desire, 
and  it  is  justified  against  all  accusation  by 
that  thrill  with  which  something  in  us  re- 
sponds to  it,  admitting:  This  is  I,  myself, 
so  it  has  been  given  to  me  to  sin  and  to  suf- 
fer. And  so,  if  we  think  deeply  enough 
we  shall  find,  in  these  sinning,  suffering, 
insatiable  beings,  who  present  themselves  as 
if  naked  before  us,  the  image  of  our  own 

222 


The  Sicilian  Actors 

souls,  visible  for  once,  and  unashamed,  in 
the  mirror  of  these  bodies.  It  is  we,  who 
shudder  before  them,  and  maybe  laugh  at 
the  extravagance  of  their  gestures,  it  is  our- 
selves whom  they  are  showing  to  us,  caught 
unawares  and  set  in  symbolical  action.  Let 
not  the  base  word  realism  be  used  for  this 
spontaneous  energy  by  which  we  are  shown 
the  devastating  inner  forces,  by  which  nature 
creates  and  destroys  us.  Here  is  one  part 
of  life,  the  source  of  its  existence:  and  here 
it  is  shown  us  crude  as  nature,  absolute  as 
art.  This  new,  living  art  of  the  body,  which 
we  see  struggling  in  the  clay  of  Rodin,  con- 
centrates itself  for  once  in  this  woman  who 
expresses,  without  reticence  and  without 
offence,  all  that  the  poets  have  ever  said  of 
the  supreme  witchcraft,  animal  desire,  with- 
out passion,  carnal,  its  own  self -devouring 
agony.  Art  has  for  once  justified  itself 
by  being  mere  nature. 

And,  here  again,  this  play  is  no  mas- 
terpiece in  itself,  only  the  occasion  for  a 
masterpiece  of  acting.  The  whole  com- 
pany, Sig.  Grasso  and  the  others,  acted 

223 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

with  perfect  unanimity,  singly  and  in 
crowds.  What  stage-crowd  of  a  hun- 
dred drilled  and  dumpish  people,  as  we 
see  it  at  our  big  theatres,  has  ever  given  us 
that  sense  of  a  real,  surging  crowd  as  the 
dozen  or  so  supers  in  that  last  struggle 
which  ends  the  play?  But  the  play  really 
existed  for  Aguglia,  and  was  made  by  her. 
Re  jane  has  done  greater  things  in  her  own 
way,  in  her  own  way  she  is  a  greater  artist. 
But  not  even  Re  jane  has  given  us  the  whole 
animal,  in  its  self -martyrdom,  as  this  woman 
has  given  it  to  us.  Such  knowledge  and 
command  of  the  body,  and  so  frank  an 
abandonment  to  its  instinctive  motions,  has 
never  been  seen  on  our  stage,  not  even  in 
Sada  Yacco  and  the  Japanese.  They  could 
outdo  Sarah  in  a  death-scene,  but  not  Agu- 
glia in  the  scene  in  which  she  betrays  her 
secret.  Done  by  anyone  else,  it  would  have 
been  an  imitation  of  a  woman  in  hysterics, 
a  thing  meaningless  and  disgusting.  Done 
by  her,  it  was  the  visible  contest  between  will 
and  desire,  a  battle,  a  shipwreck,  in  which 
you  watch  helplessly  from  the  shore  every 

224 


The  Sicilian  Actors 

plank  as  the  sea  tears  if  off  and  swallows 
it.  "  I  feel  as  if  I  had  died,"  said  the  friend 
who  was  with  me  in  the  theatre,  speaking  out 
of  an  uncontrollable  sympathy;  died  with 
the  woman,  she  meant,  or  in  the  woman's 
place. 

Our  critics  here  have  for  the  most  part 
seen  fit,  like  the  French  critic  whom  I  quoted 
at  the  beginning,  to  qualify  their  natural 
admiration  by  a  hesitating  consciousness  that 
"  la  passion  parait  decidement  avoir  partout 
ses  inconvenients."  But  the  critic  who  sets 
himself  against  a  magnetic  current  can  do 
no  more  than  accept  the  shock  which  has 
cast  him  gently  aside.  All  art  is  magnetism. 
The  greatest  art  is  a  magnetism  through 
which  the  soul  reaches  the  soul.  There  is 
another,  terrible,  authentic  art  through  which 
the  body  communicates  its  thrilling  secrets. 
And  against  all  these  currents  there  is  no 
barrier  and  no  appeal. 


225 


MUSIC 


ON  WRITING  ABOUT  MUSIC 

THE  reason  why  music  is  so  much  more 
difficult  to  write  about  than  any  other  art, 
is  because  music  is  the  one  absolutely  dis- 
embodied art,  when  it  is  heard,  and  no  more 
than  a  proposition  of  Euclid,  when  it  is 
written.  It  is  wholly  useless,  to  the  student 
no  less  than  to  the  general  reader,  to  write 
about  music  in  the  style  of  the  programmes 
for  which  we  pay  sixpence  at  the  concerts. 
"Repeated  by  flute  and  oboe,  with  accom- 
paniment for  clarionet  (in  triplets)  arid 
strings  pizzicato,  and  then  worked  up  by  the 
full  orchestra,  this  melody  is  eventually  al- 
lotted to  the  'cellos,  its  accompaniment  now 
taking  the  form  of  chromatic  passages,"  and 
so  forth.  Not  less  useless  is  it  to  write  a  rhap- 
sody which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  notes, 
and  to  present  this  as  an  interpretation  of 
what  the  notes  have  said  in  an  unknown  lan- 
guage. Yet  what  method  is  there  besides 

229 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

these  two  methods?  None,  indeed,  that  can 
ever  be  wholly  satisfactory;  at  the  best,  no 
more  than  a  compromise. 

In  writing  about  poetry,  while  precisely 
that  quality  which  makes  it  poetry  must  al- 
ways evade  expression,  there  yet  remain  the 
whole  definite  meaning  of  the  words,  and 
the  whole  easily  explicable  technique  of  the 
verse,  which  can  be  made  clear  to  every 
reader.  In  painting,  you  have  the  subject 
of  the  picture,  and  you  have  the  colour, 
handling,  and  the  like,  which  can  be  ex- 
pressed hardly  less  precisely  in  words.  But 
music  has  no  subject,  outside  itself;  no  mean- 
ing, outside  its  meaning  as  music;  and,  to 
understand  anything  of  what  is  meant  by 
its  technique,  a  certain  definite  technical 
knowledge  is  necessary  in  the  reader.  What 
subterfuges  are  required,  in  order  to  give  the 
vaguest  suggestion  of  what  a  piece  of  mu- 
sic is  like,  and  how  little  has  been  said,  after 
all,  beyond  generalisations,  which  would  ap- 
ply equally  to  half  a  dozen  different  pieces ! 
The  composer  himself,  if  you  ask  him,  will 
tell  you  that  you  may  be  quite  correct  in 

230 


On   Writing  about  Music 

what  you  say,  but  that  he  has  no  opinion  in 
the  matter. 

Music  has  indeed  a  language,  but  it  is  a 
language  in  which  birds  and  other  angels 
may  talk,  but  out  of  which  we  cannot  trans- 
late their  meaning.  Emotion  itself,  how 
changed  becomes  even  emotion  when  we 
transport  it  into  a  new  world,  in  which  only 
sound  has  feeling!  But  I  am  speaking  as 
if  it  had  died  and  been  re-born  there,  whereas 
it  was  born  in  its  own  region,  and  is  wholly 
ignorant  of  ours. 


231 


TECHNIQUE  AND   THE   ARTIST 

TECHNIQUE  and  the  artist:  that  is  a  question, 
of  interest  to  the  student  of  every  art,  which 
was  brought  home  to  me  with  unusual  em- 
phasis the  other  afternoon,  as  I  sat  in  the 
Queen's  Hall,  and  listened  to  Ysaye  and 
Busoni.  Are  we  always  quite  certain  what 
we  mean  when  we  speak  of  an  artist?  Have 
we  quite  realised  in  our  own  minds  the  ex- 
tent to  which  technique  must  go  to  the  mak- 
ing of  an  artist,  and  the  point  at  which 
something  else  must  be  superadded?  That 
is  a  matter  which  I  often  doubt,  and  the  old 
doubt  came  back  to  my  mind  the  other  after- 
noon, as  I  listened  to  Ysaye  and  Busoni, 
and  next  day,  as  I  turned  over  the  news- 
papers. 

I  read,  in  the  first  paper  I  happen  to  take 
up,  that  the  violinist  and  the  pianist  are  "  a 
perfectly  matched  pair";  the  applause,  at 
the  concert,  was  even  more  enthusiastic  for 
Busoni  than  for  Ysaye.  I  hear  both  spoken 

232 


Technique  and  the  Artist 

of  as  artists,  as  great  artists;  and  yet,  if 
words  have  any  meaning,  it  seems  to  me  that 
only  one  of  the  two  is  an  artist  at  all,  and 
the  other,  with  all  his  ahility,  only  an  exec- 
utant. Admit,  for  a  moment,  that  the 
technique  of  the  two  is  equal,  though  it  is 
not  quite  possible  to  admit  even  that,  in  the 
strictest  sense.  So  far,  we  have  made  only 
a  beginning.  Without  technique,  perfect  of 
its  kind,  no  one  is  worth  consideration  in 
any  art.  The  rope-dancer  or  the  acrobat 
must  be  perfect  in  technique  before  he  ap- 
pears on  the  stage  at  all;  in  his  case,  a  lapse 
from  perfection  brings  its  own  penalty, 
death  perhaps ;  his  art  begins  when  his  tech- 
nique is  already  perfect.  Artists  who  deal 
in  materials  less  fragile  than  human  life 
should  have  no  less  undeviating  a  sense  of 
responsibility  to  themselves  and  to  art.  But 
the  performance  comes  afterwards,  and  it  is 
the  performance  with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned. Of  two  acrobats,  each  equally  skil- 
ful, one  will  be  individual  and  an  artist,  the 
other  will  remain  consummately  skilful  and 
uninteresting;  the  one  having  begun  where 

233 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

the  other  leaves  off.  Now  Busoni  can  do,  on 
the  pianoforte,  whatever  he  can  conceive; 
the  question  is,  what  can  he  conceive?  As 
he  sat  at  the  piano  playing  Chopin,  I  thought 
of  Busoni,  of  the  Bechstein  piano,  of  what 
fingers  can  do,  of  many  other  extraneous 
things,  never  of  Chopin.  I  saw  the  pianist 
with  the  Christ-like  head,  the  carefully  neg- 
ligent elegance  of  his  appearance,  and  I 
heard  wonderful  sounds  coming  out  of  the 
Bechstein  piano;  but,  try  as  hard  as  I  liked, 
I  could  not  feel  the  contact  of  soul  and  in- 
strument, I  could  not  feel  that  a  human  be- 
ing was  expressing  himself  in  sound.  A 
task  was  magnificently  accomplished,  but  a 
new  beauty  had  not  come  into  the  world. 
Then  the  Kreutzer  Sonata  began,  and  I 
looked  at  Ysaye,  as  he  stood,  an  almost 
shapeless  mass  of  flesh,  holding  the  violin 
between  his  fat  fingers,  and  looking  vaguely 
into  the  air.  He  put  the  violin  to  his  shoul- 
der. The  face  had  been  like  a  mass  of  clay, 
waiting  the  sculptor's  thumb.  As  the  music 
came,  an  invisible  touch  seemed  to  pass  over 
it ;  the  heavy  mouth  and  chin  remained  firm, 

234 


Technique  and   the  Artist 

pressed  down  on  the  violin;  but  the  eyelids 
and  the  eyebrows  began  to  move,  as  if  the 
eyes  saw  the  sound,  and  were  drawing  it  in 
luxuriously,  with  a  kind  of  sleepy  ecstasy, 
as  one  draws  in  perfume  out  of  a  flower. 
Then,  in  that  instant,  a  beauty  which  had 
never  been  in  the  world  came  into  the  world ; 
a  new  thing  was  created,  lived,  died,  having 
revealed  itself  to  all  those  who  were  capable 
of  receiving  it.  That  thing  was  neither  Bee- 
thoven nor  Ysaye,  it  was  made  out  of  their 
meeting ;  it  was  music,  not  abstract,  but  em- 
bodied in  sound;  and  just  that  miracle  could 
never  occur  again,  though  others  like  it 
might  be  repeated  for  ever.  When  the  sound 
stopped,  the  face  returned  to  its  blind  and 
deaf  waiting;  the  interval,  like  all  the  rest 
of  life  probably,  not  counting  in  the  exist- 
ence of  that  particular  soul,  which  came  and 
went  with  the  music. 

And  Ysaye  seems  to  me  the  type  of  the 
artist,  not  because  he  is  faultless  in  technique, 
but  because  he  begins  to  create  his  art  at 
the  point  where  faultless  technique  leaves 
off.  With  him,  every  faculty  is  in  harmony ; 

235 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

he  has  not  even  too  much  of  any  good  thing. 
There  are  times  when  Busoni  astonishes  one ; 
Ysaye  never  astonishes  one,  it  seems  natural 
that  he  should  do  everything  that  he  does, 
just  as  he  does  it.  Art,  as  Aristotle  has  said 
finally,  should  always  have  "a  continual 
slight  novelty";  it  should  never  astonish, 
for  we  are  astonished  only  by  some  excess 
or  default,  never  by  a  thing  being  what  it 
ought  to  be.  It  is  a  fashion  of  the  moment 
to  prize  extravagance  and  to  be  timid  of  per- 
fection. That  is  why  we  give  the  name  of 
artist  to  those  who  can  startle  us  most.  We 
have  come  to  value  technique  for  the  vio- 
lence which  it  gives  into  the  hands  of  those 
who  possess  it,  in  their  assault  upon  our 
nerves.  We  have  come  to  look  upon  tech- 
nique as  an  end  in  itself,  rather  than  as  a 
means  to  an  end.  We  have  but  one  word  of 
praise,  and  we  use  that  one  word  lavishly. 
An  Ysaye  and  a  Busoni  are  the  same  to  us, 
and  it  is  to  our  credit  if  we  are  even  aware 
that  Ysaye  is  the  equal  of  Busoni. 


PACHMANN  AND   THE  PIANO 


IT  seems  to  me  that  Pachmann  is  the  only 
pianist  who  plays  the  piano  as  it  ought  to  be 
played.  I  admit  his  limitations,  I  admit  that 
he  can  play  only  certain  things,  but  I  con- 
tend that  he  is  the  greatest  living  pianist 
because  he  can  play  those  things  better  than 
any  other  pianist  can  play  anything.  Pach- 
mann is  the  Verlaine  of  pianists,  and  when  I 
hear  him  I  think  of  Verlaine  reading  his 
own  verse,  in  a  faint,  reluctant  voice,  which 
you  overheard.  Other  players  have  mas- 
tered the  piano,  Pachmann  absorbs  its  soul, 
and  it  is  only  when  he  touches  it  that  it 
really  speaks  its  own  voice. 

The  art  of  the  pianist,  after  all,  lies  mainly 
in  one  thing,  touch.  It  is  by  the  skill,  pre- 
cision, and  beauty  of  his  touch  that  he  makes 
music  at  all;  it  is  by  the  quality  of  his  touch 
that  he  evokes  a  more  or  less  miraculous 
vision  of  sound  for<us.  Touch  gives  him  his 
237 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

only  means  of  expression;  it  is  to  him  what 
relief  is  to  the  sculptor  or  what  values  are 
to  the  painter.  To  "understand,"  as  it  is 
called,  a  piece  of  music,  is  not  so  much  as 
the  beginning  of  good  playing ;  if  you  do  not 
understand  it  with  your  fingers,  what  shall 
your  brain  profit  you?  In  the  interpretation 
of  music  all  action  of  the  brain  which  does 
not  translate  itself  perfectly  in  touch  is  use- 
less. You  may  as  well  not  think  at  all  as  not 
think  in  terms  of  your  instrument,  and  the 
piano  responds  to  one  thing  only,  touch. 
Now  Pachmann,  beyond  all  other  pianists, 
has  this  magic.  When  he  plays  it,  the  piano 
ceases  to  be  a  compromise.  He  makes  it  as 
living  and  penetrating  as  the  violin,  as 
responsive  and  elusive  as  the  clavichord. 

Chopin  wrote  for  the  piano  with  a  more 
perfect  sense  of  his  instrument  than  any 
other  composer,  and  Pachmann  plays 
Chopin  with  an  infallible  sense  of  what 
Chopin  meant  to  express  in  his  mind.  He 
seems  to  touch  the  notes  with  a  kind  of 
agony  of  delight;  his  face  twitches  with  the 
actual  muscular  contraction  of  the  fingers 
as  they  suspend  themselves  in  the  very  act 

238 


Pachmann   and   the  Piano 

of  touch.  I  am  told  that  Pachmann  plays 
Chopin  in  a  morbid  way.  Well,  Chopin  was 
morbid;  there  are  fevers  and  cold  sweats 
in  his  music;  it  is  not  healthy  music,  and  it  is 
not  to  be  interpreted  in  a  robust  way.  It 
must  be  played,  as  Pachmann  plays  it,  som- 
nambulistically,  with  a  tremulous  deli- 
cacy of  intensity,  as  if  it  were  a  living 
thing  on  whose  nerves  one  were  operating, 
and  as  if  every  touch  might  mean  life  or 
death. 

I  have  heard  pianists  who  played  Chopin 
in  what  they  called  a  healthy  way.  The  notes 
swung,  spun,  and  clattered,  with  a  heroic  re- 
percussion of  sound,  a  hurrying  reiteration 
of  fury,  signifying  nothing.  The  piano 
stormed  through  the  applause;  the  pianist 
sat  imperturbably,  hammering.  Well,  I  do 
not  think  any  music  should  be  played  like 
that,  not  Liszt  even.  Liszt  connives  at  the 
suicide,  but  with  Chopin  it  is  a  murder. 
When  Pachmann  plays  Chopin  the  music 
sings  itself,  as  if  without  the  intervention 
of  an  executant,  of  one  who  stands  between 
the  music  and  our  hearing.  The  music  has 
to  intoxicate  him  before  he  can  play  with  it; 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

then  he  becomes  its  comrade,  in  a  kind  of 
very  serious  game;  himself,  in  short,  that  is 
to  say  inhuman.  His  fingers  have  in  them  a 
cold  magic,  as  of  soulless  elves  who  have 
sold  their  souls  for  beauty.  And  this  beauty, 
which  is  not  of  the  soul,  is  not  of  the  flesh; 
it  is  a  sea-change,  the  life  of  the  foam  on 
the  edge  of  the  depths.  Or  it  transports 
him  into  some  mid-region  of  the  air,  between 
hell  and  heaven,  where  he  hangs  listening. 
He  listens  at  all  his  senses.  The  dew,  as  well 
as  the  raindrop,  has  a  sound  for  him. 

In  Pachmann's  playing  there  is  a  frozen 
tenderness,  with,  at  moments,  the  elvish  tri- 
umph of  a  gnome  who  has  found  a  bright 
crystal  or  a  diamond.  Pachmann  is  inhu- 
man, and  music,  too,  is  inhuman.  To  him, 
and  rightly,  it  is  a  thing  not  domesticated, 
not  familiar  as  a  household  cat  with  our 
hearth.  When  he  plays  it,  music  speaks  no 
language  known  to  us,  has  nothing  of  our- 
selves to  tell  us,  but  is  shy,  alien,  and 
speaks  a  language  which  we  do  not  know. 
It  comes  to  us  a  divine  hallucination,  chills 
us  a  little  with  its  "airs  from  heaven"  or 
elsewhere,  and  breaks  down  for  an  instant 

240 


Pachmann   and   the  Piano 

the  too  solid  walls  of  the  world,  showing  us 
the  gulf.  When  d'Albert  plays  Chopin's 
Berceuse,  beautifully,  it  is  a  lullaby  for 
healthy  male  children  growing  too  big  for 
the  cradle.  Pachmann's  is  a  lullably  for 
fairy  changelings  who  have  never  had  a 
soul,  but  in  whose  veins  music  vibrates;  and 
in  this  intimate  alien  thing  he  finds  a  kind 
of  humour. 

In  the  attempt  to  humanise  music,  that 
attempt  which  almost  every  executant 
makes,  knowing  that  he  will  be  judged  by 
his  success  or  failure  in  it,  what  is  most 
fatally  lost  is  that  sense  of  mystery  which, 
to  music,  is  atmosphere.  In  this  atmosphere 
alone  music  breathes  tranquilly.  So  remote 
is  -it  from  us  that  it  can  only  be  reached 
through  some  not  quite  healthy  nervous  ten- 
sion, and  Pachmann's  physical  disquietude 
when  he  plays  is  but  a  sign  of  what  it  has 
cost  him  to  venture  outside  humanity,  into 
music.  Yet  in  music  this  mystery  is  a  sim- 
ple thing,  its  native  air;  and  the  art  of  the 
musician  has  less  difficulty  in  its  evocation 
than  the  art  of  the  poet  or  the  painter.  With 
what  an  effort  do  we  persuade  words  or 

24,1 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

colours  back  from  their  vulgar  articulateness 
into  at  least  some  recollection  of  that  mys- 
tery which  is  deeper  than  sight  or  speech. 
Music  can  never  wholly  be  detached  from 
mystery,  can  never  wholly  become  articulate, 
and  it  is  in  our  ignorance  of  its  true  nature 
that  we  would  tame  it  to  humanity  and  teach 
it  to  express  human  emotions,  not  its  own. 

Pachmann  gives  you  pure  music,  not 
states  of  soul  or  of  temperament,  not  inter- 
pretations, but  echoes.  He  gives  you  the 
notes  in  their  own  atmosphere,  where  they 
live  for  him  an  individual  life,  which  has 
nothing  to  do  with  emotions  or  ideas.  Thus 
he  does  not  need  to  translate  out  of  two  lan- 
guages: first,  from  sound  to  emotion,  tem- 
perament, what  you  will;  then  from  that 
back  again  to  sound.  The  notes  exist;  it  is 
enough  that  they  exist.  They  mean  for  him 
just  the  sound  and  nothing  else.  You  see 
his  fingers  feeling  after  it,  his  face  calling 
to  it,  his  whole  body  imploring  it.  Some- 
times it  comes  upon  him  in  such  a  burst  of 
light  that  he  has  to  cry  aloud,  in  order  that 
he  may  endure  the  ecstasy.  You  see  him 


Pachmann  and  the  Piano 

speaking  to  the  music;  he  lifts  his  finger, 
that  you  may  listen  for  it  not  less  atten- 
tively. But  it  is  always  the  thing  itself  that 
he  evokes  for  you,  as  it  rises  flower-like  out 
of  silence,  and  comes  to  exist  in  the  world. 
Every  note  lives,  with  the  whole  vitality  of 
its  existence.  To  Swinburne  every  word 
lives,  just  in  the  same  way;  when  he  says 
"light,"  he  sees  the  sunrise;  when  he  says 
"fire,"  he  is  warmed  through  all  his  blood. 
And  so  Pachmann  calls  up,  with  this  ghostly 
magic  of  his,  the  innermost  life  of  music. 
I  do  not  think  he  has  ever  put  an  intention 
into  Chopin.  Chopin  had  no  intentions.  He 
was  a  man,  and  he  suffered;  and  he  was  a 
musician,  and  he  wrote  music;  and  very 
likely  George  Sand,  and  Majorca,  and  his 
disease,  and  Scotland,  and  the  woman  who 
sang  to  him  when  he  died,  are  all  in  the 
music;  but  that  is  not  the  question.  The 
notes  sob  and  shiver,  stab  you  like  a  knife, 
caress  you  like  the  fur  of  a  cat;  and  are 
beautiful  sound,  the  most  beautiful  sound 
that  has  been  called  out  of  the  piano.  Pach- 
mann calls  it  out  for  you,  disinterestedly, 

243 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

easily,  with  ecstasy,  inevitably;  you  do  not 
realise  that  he  has  had  difficulties  to  conquer, 
that  music  is  a  thing  for  acrobats  and  ath- 
letes. He  smiles  to  you,  that  you  may  real- 
ise how  beautiful  the  notes  are,  when  they 
trickle  out  of  his  fingers  like  singing  water; 
he  adores  them  and  his  own  playing,  as  you 
do,  and  as  if  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  them 
but  to  pour  them  out  of  his  hands.  Pach- 
mann  is  less  showy  with  his  fingers  than  any 
other  pianist;  his  hands  are  stealthy  acro- 
bats, going  quietly  about  their  difficult  busi- 
ness. They  talk  with  the  piano  and  the 
piano  answers  them.  All  that  violence  can- 
not do  with  the  notes  of  the  instrument,  he 
does.  His  art  begins  where  violence  leaves 
off;  that  is  why  he  can  give  you  fortissimo 
without  hurting  the  nerves  of  a  single  string ; 
that  is  why  he  can  play  a  run  as  if  every 
note  had  its  meaning.  To  the  others  a  run 
is  a  flourish,  a  tassel  hung  on  for  display,  a 
thing  extra;  when  Pachmann  plays  a  run 
you  realise  that  it  may  have  its  own  legiti- 
mate sparkle  of  gay  life.  With  him  every 
note  lives,  has  its  own  body  and  its  own  soul, 

244 


Pachmann  and   the  Piano 

and  that  is  why  it  is  worth  hearing  him  play 
even  trivial  music  like  Mendelssohn's 
"  Spring  Song  "  or  meaningless  music  like 
Taubert's  Waltz :  he  creates  a  beauty  out  of 
sound  itself  and  a  beauty  which  is  at  the  root 
of  music.  There  are  moments  when  a  single 
chord  seems  to  say  in  itself  everything  that 
music  has  to  say.  That  is  the  moment  in 
which  everything  but  sound  is  annihilated, 
the  moment  of  ecstasy;  and  it  is  of  such 
moments  that  Pachmann  is  the  poet. 

And  so  his  playing  of  Bach,  as  in  the 
Italian  Concerto  in  F,  reveals  Bach  as  if  the 
dust  had  suddenly  been  brushed  off  his  music. 
All  that  in  the  playing  of  others  had  seemed 
hard  or  dry  becomes  suddenly  luminous, 
alive,  and,  above  all,  a  miracle  of  sound. 
Through  a  delicacy  of  shading,  like  the  art 
of  Bach  himself  for  purity,  poignancy,  and 
clarity,  he  envelops  us  with  the  thrilling  at- 
mosphere of  the  most  absolutely  musical 
music  in  the  world.  The  playing  of  this 
concerto  is  the  greatest  thing  I  have  ever 
heard  Pachmann  do,  but  when  he  went  on  to 
play  Mozart  I  heard  another  only  less  beau- 

245 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

tiful  world  of  sound  rise  softly  about  me. 
There  was  the  "glittering  peace"  un- 
dimmed,  and  there  was  the  nervous  spring, 
the  diamond  hardness,  as  well  as  the  glowing 
light  and  ardent  sweetness.  Yet  another 
manner  of  playing,  not  less  appropriate  to 
its  subject,  brought  before  me  the  bubbling 
flow,  the  romantic  moonlight,  of  Weber; 
this  music  that  is  a  little  showy,  a  little  lus- 
cious, but  with  a  gracious  feminine  beauty 
of  its  own.  Chopin  followed,  and  when 
Pachmann  plays  Chopin  it  is  as  if  the  soul 
of  Chopin  had  returned  to  its  divine  body, 
the  notes  of  this  sinewy  and  feverish  music, 
in  which  beauty  becomes  a  torture  and 
energy  pierces  to  the  centre  and  becomes 
grace,  and  languor  swoons  and  is  reborn 
a  winged  energy.  The  great  third  Scherzo 
was  played  with  grandeur,  and  it  is 
in  the  Scherzos,  perhaps,  that  Chopin 
has  built  his  most  enduring  work.  The 
Barcarolle,  which  I  have  heard  played 
as  if  it  were  Niagara  and  not  Ven- 
ice, was  given  with  perfect  quietude,  and 
the  second  Mazurka  of  Op.  50  had  that 

246 


Pachmann   and   the  Piano 

boldness  of  attack,  with  an  almost  stealthy 
intimacy  in  its  secret  rhythms,  which  in 
Pachmann's  playing,  and  in  his  playing 
alone,  gives  you  the  dance  and  the  reverie 
together.  But  I  am  not  sure  that  the  Etudes 
are  not,  in  a  very  personal  sense,  what  is 
most  essential  in  Chopin,  and  I  am  not  sure 
that  Pachmann  is  not  at  his  best  in  the  play- 
ing of  the  Etudes. 

Other  pianists  think,  perhaps,  but  Pach- 
mann plays.  As  he  plays  he  is  like  one  hyp- 
notised by  the  music;  he  sees  it  beckoning, 
smiles  to  it,  lifts  his  finger  on  a  pause  that 
you  may  listen  to  the  note  which  is  coming. 
This  apparent  hypnotism  is  really  a  fixed 
and  continuous  act  of  creation;  there  is  not 
a  note  which  he  does  not  create  for  himself, 
to  which  he  does  not  give  his  own  vitality, 
the  sensitive  and  yet  controlling  vitality  of 
the  medium.  In  playing  the  Bach  he  had 
the  music  before  him  that  he  might  be 
wholly  free  from  even  the  slight  strain  which 
comes  from  the  almost  unconscious  act  of 
remembering.  It  was  for  a  precisely  sim- 
ilar reason  that  Coleridge,  in  whose  verse  in- 

247 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

spiration  and  art  are  more  perfectly  bal- 
anced than  in  any  other  English  verse,  often 
wrote  down  his  poems  first  in  prose  that  he 
might  be  unhampered  by  the  conscious  act 
of  thought  while  listening  for  the  music. 

"There  is  no  exquisite  beauty,"  said 
Bacon  in  a  subtle  definition,  "  which  has  not 
some  strangeness  in  its  proportions."  The 
playing  of  Pachmann  escapes  the  insipidity 
of  that  beauty  which  is  without  strangeness ; 
it  has  in  it  something  fantastically  inhuman, 
like  fiery  ice,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  it 
remains  a  thing  uncapturable,  a  thing  whose 
secret  he  himself  could  never  reveal.  It  is 
like  the  secret  of  the  rhythms  of  Verlaine, 
and  no  prosodist  will  ever  tell  us  why  a  line 
like: 

Dans  un  palais,  soie  et  or,  dans  Ecbatane, 

can  communicate  a  new  shiver  to  the  most 
languid  or  the  most  experienced  nerves. 
Like  the  art  of  Verlaine,  the  art  of  Pach- 
mann is  one  wholly  of  suggestion;  his  fin- 
gers state  nothing,  they  evoke.  I  said  like 
the  art  of  Verlaine,  because  there  is  a  sin- 
gular likeness  between  the  two  methods.  But 

248 


Pachmann   and  the  Piano 

is  not  all  art  a  suggestion,  an  evocation, 
never  a  statement?  Many  of  the  great 
forces  of  the  present  day  have  set  them- 
selves to  the  task  of  building  up  a  large, 
positive  art  in  which  everything  shall  be  said 
with  emphasis:  the  art  of  Zola,  the  art  of 
Mr.  Kipling,  in  literature;  the  art  of  Mr. 
Sargent  in  painting;  the  art  of  Richard 
Strauss  in  music.  In  all  these  remarkable 
men  there  is  some  small,  essential  thing  lack- 
ing; and  it  is  in  men  like  Verlaine,  like 
Whistler,  like  Pachmann,  that  we  find  the 
small,  essential  thing,  and  nothing  else. 


II 

The  sounds  to»ture  me:  I  see  them  in  my  brain; 
They  spin  a  flickering  web  of  living  threads, 
Like  butterflies  upon  the  garden  beds, 
Nets  of  bright  sound.     I  follow  them :  in  vain. 
I  must  not  brush  the  least  dust  from  their  wings : 
They  die  of  a  touch;  but  I  must  capture  them, 
Or  they  will  turn  to  a  caressing  flame, 
And  lick  my  soul  up  with  their  flutterings. 

The  sounds  torture  me :  I  count  them  with  my  eyes, 
I  feel  them  like  a  thirst  between  my  lips ; 
Is  it  my  body  or  my  soul  that  cries 
249 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

With  little  coloured  mouths  of  sound,  and  drips 
In  these  bright  drops  that  turn  to  butterflies 
Dying  delicately  at  my  finger  tips?  J 

III 

Pachmann  has  the  head  of  a  monk  who 
has  had  commerce  with  the  Devil,  and  it  is 
whispered  that  he  has  sold  his  soul  to  the 
diabolical  instrument,  which,  since  buying 
it,  can  speak  in  a  human  voice.  The  sounds 
torture  him,  as  a  wizard  is  tortured  by  the 
shapes  he  has  evoked.  He  makes  them  dance 
for  his  pleasure,  and  you  hear  their  breath 
come  and  go,  in  the  swell  and  subsiding  of 
those  marvellous  crescendoes  and  diminuen- 
does  which  set  the  strings  pulsating  like  a 
sea.  He  listens  for  the  sound,  listens  for  the 
last  echo  of  it  after  it  is  gone,  and  is  caught 
away  from  us  visibly  into  that  unholy  com- 
pany. 

Pachmann  is  the  greatest  player  of  the 
piano  now  living.  He  cannot  interpret  every 
kind  of  music,  though  his  actual  power  is 
more  varied  than  he  has  led  the  public  to 
suppose.  I  have  heard  him  play  in  private 

250 


Pachmann  and   the  Piano 

a  show-piece  of  Liszt,  a  thunderous  thing 
of  immense  difficulty,  requiring  a  technique 
quite  different  from  the  technique  which 
alone  he  cares  to  reveal  to  us;  he  had  not 
played  it  for  twenty  years,  and  he  played  it 
with  exactly  the  right  crackling  splendour 
that  it  demanded.  On  the  rare  occasions 
when  he  plays  Bach,  something  that  no  one 
of  our  time  has  ever  perceived  or  rendered 
in  that  composer  seems  to  be  evoked,  and 
Bach  lives  again,  with  something  of  that 
forgotten  life  which  only  the  harpsichord 
can  help  us  to  remember  under  the  fingers 
of  other  players.  Mozart  and  Weber  are 
two  of  the  composers  whom  he  plays  with 
the  most  natural  instinct,  for  in  both  he  finds 
and  unweaves  that  dainty  web  of  bright 
melody  which  Mozart  made  out  of  sunlight 
and  Weber  out  of  moonlight.  There  is 
nothing  between  him  and  them,  as  there  is 
in  Beethoven,  for  instance,  who  hides  him- 
self in  the  depths  of  a  cloud,  in  the  depths 
of  wisdom,  in  the  depths  of  the  heart.  And 
to  Pachmann  all  this  is  as  strange  as  mortal 
firesides  to  a  fairy.  He  wanders  round  it, 

S51 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

wondering  at  the  great  walls  and  bars  that 
have  been  set  about  the  faint,  escaping  spirit 
of  flame.  There  is  nothing  human  in  him, 
and  as  music  turns  towards  humanity  it  slips 
from  between  his  hands.  What  he  seeks  and 
finds  in  music  is  the  inarticulate,  ultimate 
thing  in  sound:  the  music,  in  fact. 

It  has  been  complained  that  Pachmann's 
readings  are  not  intellectual,  that  he  does 
not  interpret.  It  is  true  that  he  does  not 
interpret  between  the  brain  and  music,  but 
he  is  able  to  disimprisoii  sound,  as  no  one  has 
ever  done  with  mortal  hands,  and  the  piano, 
when  he  touches  it,  becomes  a  joyous,  disem- 
bodied thing,  a  voice  and  nothing  more,  but 
a  voice  which  is  music  itself.  To  reduce 
music  to  terms  of  human  intelligence  or  even 
of  human  emotion  is  to  lower  it  from  its  own 
region,  where  it  is  Ariel.  There  is  some- 
thing in  music,  which  we  can  apprehend 
only  as  sound,  that  comes  to  us  out  of 
heaven  or  hell,  mocking  the  human  agency 
that  gives  it  speech,  and  taking  flight  be- 
yond it.  When  Pachmann  plays  a  Prelude 
of  Chopin,  all  that  Chopin  was  conscious  of 

252 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

- 

£4  U  FOR  N\k 


Pachmann  and  the  Piano 

saying  in  it  will,  no  doubt,  be  there;  it  is  all 
there,  if  Godowsky  plays  it;  every  note, 
every  shade  of  expression,  every  heighten- 
ing and  quickening,  everything  that  the 
notes  actually  say.  But  under  Pachmann's 
miraculous  hands  a  miracle  takes  place ;  mys- 
tery comes  about  it  like  an  atmosphere,  an 
icy  thrill  traverses  it,  the  terror  and  ecstasy 
of  a  beauty  that  is  not  in  the  world  en- 
velop it;  we  hear  sounds  that  are  awful  and 
exquisite,  crying  outside  time  and  space.  Is 
it  through  Pachmann's  nerves,  or  through 
ours,  that  this  communion  takes  place?  Is 
it  technique,  temperament,  touch,  that  re- 
veals to  us  what  we  have  never  dreamed  was 
hidden  in  sounds?  Could  Pachmann  him- 
self explain  to  us  his  own  magic? 

He  would  tell  us  that  he  had  practised  the 
piano  with  more  patience  than  others,  that 
he  had  taken  more  trouble  to  acquire  a  cer- 
tain touch  which  is  really  the  only  way  to 
the  secret  of  his  instrument.  He  could  tell 
you  little  more;  but,  if  you  saw  his  hands 
settle  on  the  keys,  and  fly  and  poise  there, 
as  if  they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  per- 

253 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

turbed,  listening  face  that  smiles  away  from 
them,  you  would  know  how  little  he  had  told 
you.  Now  let  us  ask  Godowsky,  whom  Pach- 
mann  himself  sets  above  all  other  pianists, 
what  he  has  to  tell  us  about  the  way  in  which 
he  plays. 

When  Godowsky  plays  he  sits  bent  and 
motionless,  as  if  picking  out  a  pattern  with 
his  fingers.  He  seems  to  keep  surreptitious 
watch  upon  them,  as  they  run  swiftly  on 
their  appointed  errands.  There  is  no  errand 
they  are  not  nimble  enough  to  carry  without 
a  stumble  to  the  journey's  end.  They  obey 
him  as  if  in  fear;  they  dare  not  turn  aside 
from  the  straight  path;  for  their  whole  aim 
is  to  get  to  the  end  of  the  journey,  having 
done  their  task  faultlessly.  Sometimes,  but 
without  relaxing  his  learned  gravity,  he 
plays  a  difficult  game,  as  in  the  Paganini 
variations  of  Brahms,  which  were  done  with 
a  skill  as  sure  and  as  soulless  as  Paganini's 
may  have  been.  Sometimes  he  forgets  that 
the  notes  are  living  things,  and  tosses  them 
about  a  little  cruelly,  as  if  they  were  a  jug- 
gler's balls.  They  drop  like  stones ;  you  are 

254 


PacTimann   and   the  Piano 

sorry  for  them,  because  they  are  alive.  How 
Chopin  suffers,  when  he  plays  the  Preludes ! 
He  plays  them  without  a  throb ;  the  scholar 
has  driven  out  the  magic ;  Chopin  becomes  a 
mathematician.  In  Brahms,  in  the  G 
Minor  Rhapsody,  you  hear  much  more  of 
what  Brahms  meant  to  do;  for  Brahms  has 
set  strange  shapes  dancing,  like  the  skele- 
tons "  in  the  ghosts'  moonshine  "  in  a  ballad 
of  Beddoes;  and  these  bodiless  things  take 
shape  in  the  music,  as  Godowsky  plays  it 
unflinchingly,  giving  it  to  you  exactly  as  it 
is,  without  comment.  Here  his  fidelity  to 
every  outline  of  form  becomes  an  interpre- 
tation. But  Chopin  is  so  much  more  than 
form  that  to  follow  every  outline  of  it  may 
be  to  leave  Chopin  out  of  the  outline. 

Pachmann,  of  all  the  interpreters  of 
Chopin,  is  the  most  subtle,  the  one  most 
likely  to  do  for  the  most  part  what  Chopin 
wanted.  The  test,  I  think,  is  in  the  Third 
Scherzo.  That  great  composition,  one  of 
the  greatest  among  Chopin's  works,  for  it 
contains  all  his  qualities  in  an  intense  meas- 
ure, might  have  been  thought  less  likely  to 

255 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

be  done  perfectly  by  Pachmann  than  such 
Coleridge  in  music,  such  murmurings  out  of 
paradise,  as  the  Etude  in  F  Minor  (Op.  25, 
No.  2)  or  one  of  those  Mazurkas  in  which 
Chopin  is  more  poignantly  fantastic  in  sub- 
stance, more  wild  and  whimsical  in  rhythm, 
than  elsewhere  in  his  music;  and  indeed,  as 
Pachmann  played  them,  they  were  strange 
and  lovely  gambols  of  unchristened  elves. 
But  in  the  Scherzo  he  mastered  this  great, 
violent,  heroic  thing  as  he  had  mastered  the 
little  freakish  things  and  the  trickling  and 
whispering  things.  He  gave  meaning  to 
every  part  of  its  decoration,  yet  lost  none  of 
the  splendour  and  wave-like  motion  of  the 
whole  tossing  and  eager  sea  of  sound. 

Pachmann's  art,  like  Chopin's,  which  it 
perpetuates,  is  of  that  peculiarly  modern 
kind  which  aims  at  giving  the  essence  of 
things  in  their  fine  shades:  "la  nuance  en- 
cor! "  Is  there,  it  may  be  asked,  any  essen- 
tial thing  left  out  in  the  process;  do  we  have 
attenuation  in  what  is  certainly  a  way  of 
sharpening  one's  steel  to  a  very  fine  point? 
The  sharpened  steel  gains  in  what  is  most 

256 


Pachmann  and   the  Piano 

vital  in  its  purpose  by  this  very  paring  away 
of  its  substance;  and  why  should  not  a  form 
of  art  strike  deeper  for  the  same  reason? 
Our  only  answer  to  Whistler  and  Verlaine  is 
the  existence  of  Rodin  and  Wagner.  There 
we  have  weight  as  well  as  sharpness;  these 
giants  fly.  It  was  curious  to  hear,  in  the 
vast  luminous  music  of  the  "  Rheingold," 
flowing  like  water  about  the  earth,  bare  to 
its  roots,  not  only  an  amplitude  but  a  deli- 
cacy of  fine  shades  not  less  realised  than  in 
Chopin.  Wagner,  it  is  true,  welds  the  lyric 
into  drama,  without  losing  its  lyrical  qual- 
ity. Yet  there  is  no  perfect  lyric  which  is 
made  less  by  the  greatness  of  even  a  per- 
fect drama. 

Chopin  was  once  thought  to  be  a  draw- 
ing-room composer;  Pachmann  was  once 
thought  to  be  no  "serious  artist."  Both 
have  triumphed,  not  because  the  taste  of  any 
public  has  improved,  but  because  a  few  peo- 
ple who  knew  have  whispered  the  truth  to 
one  another,  and  at  last  it  has  leaked  out 
like  a  secret. 


257 


PADEREWSKI 

I  SHALL  never  cease  to  associate  Pade- 
rewski  with  the  night  of  the  Jubilee. 
I  had  gone  on  foot  from  the  Temple 
through  those  packed,  gaudy,  noisy,  and 
vulgarised  streets,  through  which  no  vehicles 
could  pass,  to  a  rare  and  fantastic  house  at 
the  other  end  of  London,  a  famous  house 
hospitable  to  all  the  arts;  and  Paderewski 
sat  with  closed  eyes  and  played  the  piano, 
there  in  his  friend's  house,  as  if  he  were  in 
his  own  home.  After  the  music  was  over, 
someone  said  to  me,  "  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been 
in  hell,"  so  profound  was  the  emotion  she 
had  experienced  from  the  playing.  I 
would  have  said  heaven  rather  than  hell, 
for  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  but  pure 
beauty,  beauty  half  asleep  and  dream- 
ing of  itself,  in  the  marvellous  playing.  A 
spell,  certainly,  was  over  everyone,  and  then 
the  exerciser  became  human,  and  jested  de- 
liciously  till  the  early  morning,  when,  as  I 

258 


Paderewski 

went  home  through  the  still  garrulous  and 
peopled  streets,  I  saw  the  last  flutter  of 
flags  and  streamers  between  night  and 
dawn.  All  the  world  had  been  rioting  for 
pleasure  in  the  gross  way  of  popular  dem- 
onstrations ;  and  in  the  very  heart  of  this  up- 
roar there  had  been,  for  a  few  people,  this 
divine  escape. 

No  less  magical,  soothing,  enchanting 
was  the  apparition,  in  Queen's  Hall,  ten 
years  later,  of  this  unchanged  creature  with 
the  tortured  Burne-Jones  face,  level  and 
bewildering  eyes,  the  web  of  gold  hair  still 
poised  like  a  halo.  Beauty  grew  up  around 
him  like  a  sudden,  exuberant  growth,  more 
vigorous  and  from  a  deeper  root  than  be- 
fore. I  realised,  more  than  ever,  how  the 
musician  had  always  been  the  foundation  of 
the  virtuoso.  I  have  used  the  word  appari- 
tion advisedly.  There  is  something,  not 
only  in  the  aspect  of  Paderewski,  which 
seems  to  come  mysteriously,  but  full  of 
light,  from  a  great  distance.  He  startles 
music  into  a  surprised  awakening. 

The  art  of  Paderewski  recalls  to  me  the 

259 

\ 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

art  of  the  most  skilled  and  the  most  distin- 
guished of  equilibrists,  himself  a  Pole,  Paul 
Cinquevalli.  People  often  speak,  wrongly, 
of  Paderewski's  skill  as  acrobatic.  The 
word  conveys  some  sense  of  disparagement 
and,  so  used,  is  inaccurate.  But  there  is 
much  in  common  between  two  forms  of  an 
art  in  which  physical  dexterity  counts  for 
so  much,  and  that  passionate  precision  to 
which  error  must  be  impossible.  It  is  the 
same  kind  of  joy  that  you  get  from  Cin- 
quevalli when  he  juggles  with  cannon-balls 
and  from  Paderewski  when  he  brings  a  con- 
tinuous thunder  out  of  the  piano.  Other 
people  do  the  same  things,  but  no  else  can 
handle  thunder  or  a  cannon-ball  delicately. 
And  Paderewski,  in  his  absolute  mastery 
of  his  instrument,  seems  to  do  the  most  diffi- 
cult things  without  difficulty,  with  a  scorn- 
ful ease,  an  almost  accidental  quality  which, 
found  in  perfection,  marvellously  decorates 
it.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  that  anyone 
since  Liszt  has  had  so  complete  a  mastery 
of  every  capacity  of  the  piano,  and  Liszt, 
though  probably  even  more  brilliant,  can 
260 


Paderewski 

hardly  be  imagined  with  this  particular  kind 
of  charm.  His  playing  is  in  the  true  sense 
an  inspiration ;  he  plays  nothing  as  if  he  had 
learned  it  with  toil,  but  as  if  it  had  come  to 
him  out  of  a  kind  of  fiery  meditation.  Even 
his  thunder  is  not  so  much  a  thing  specially 
cultivated  for  its  own  sake  as  a  single  prom- 
inent detail  in  a  vast  accomplishment. 
When  he  plays,  the  piano  seems  to  become 
thrillingly  and  tempestuously  alive,  as  if 
brother  met  brother  in  some  joyous  triumph. 
He  collaborates  with  it,  urging  it  to  battle 
like  a  war-horse.  And  the  quality  of  the 
sonority  which  he  gets  out  of  it  is  unlike  that 
which  is  teased  or  provoked  from  the  instru- 
ment by  any  other  player.  Fierce  exub- 
erant delight  wakens  under  his  fingers,  in 
which  there  is  a  sensitiveness  almost  impa- 
tient, and  under  his  feet,  which  are  as  busy 
as  an  organist's  with  the  pedals.  The 
music  leaps  like  pouring  water,  flood  after 
flood  of  sound,  caught  together  and  flung 
onward  by  a  central  energy.  The  separate 
notes  are  never  picked  out  and  made  into 
ornaments;  all  the  expression  goes  to  pas- 

261 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

sage  after  passage,  realised  acutely  in  their 
sequence.  Where  others  give  you  hammer- 
ing on  an  anvil,  he  gives  you  thunder  as  if 
heard  through  clouds.  And  he  is  full  of 
leisure  and  meditation,  brooding  thought- 
fully over  certain  exquisite  things  as  if  loth 
to  let  them  pass  over  and  be  gone.  And  he 
seems  to  play  out  of  a  dream,  in  which  the 
fingers  are  secondary  to  the  meaning,  but 
report  that  meaning  with  entire  felicity. 

In  the  playing  of  the  "  Moonlight "  sonata 
there  was  no  Paderewski,  there  was  nothing 
but  Beethoven.  The  finale,  of  course,  was 
done  with  the  due  brilliance,  the  executant's 
share  in  a  composition  not  written  for  mod- 
ern players.  But  what  was  wonderful,  for 
its  reverence,  its  perfection  of  fidelity,  was 
the  playing  of  the  slow  movement  and  of 
the  little  sharp  movement  which  follows, 
like  the  crying  and  hopping  of  a  bird.  The 
ear  waited,  and  was  satisfied  in  every  shade 
of  anticipation;  nothing  was  missed,  noth- 
ing was  added;  the  pianist  was  as  it  were  a 
faithful  and  obedient  shadow.  As  you 
listened  you  forgot  technique,  or  that  it  was 

262 


Paderewski 

anybody  in  particular  who  was  playing:  the 
sonata  was  there,  with  all  its  moonlight,  as 
every  lover  of  Beethoven  had  known  that  it 
existed. 

Before  the  Beethoven  there  had  been  a 
"Variation  and  Fugue  on  an  original 
theme,"  in  which  Paderewski  played  his 
own  music,  really  as  if  he  were  improvising 
it  there  and  then.  I  am  not  sure  that  that 
feeling  is  altogether  to  the  credit  of  the 
music,  which,  as  I  heard  it  for  the  first  time, 
seemed  almost  too  perilously  effective,  in  its 
large  contrasts,  its  Liszt-like  succession  of 
contradictory  moods.  Sound  was  evoked  that 
it  might  swell  and  subside  like  waves,  break 
suddenly,  and  die  out  in  a  white  rain  of 
stinging  foam.  Pauses,  surprises,  all  were 
delicately  calculated  and  the  weaver  of  these 
bewildered  dreams  seemed  to  watch  over 
them  like  a  Loge  of  celestial  ingenuity. 

When  the  actual  Liszt  came,  the  inter- 
minable Sonata  in  B  minor,  in  which  the 
sugar  and  the  fire  are  so  strangely  mixed,  it 
was  as  if  Paderewski  were  still  playing  his 
own  music.  If  ever  there  was  a  show  piece 

263 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

for  the  piano,  this  was  it,  and  if  ever  there 
was  a  divine  showman  for  it,  it  was  Pade- 
rewski.  You  felt  at  once  the  personal  sym- 
pathy of  the  great  pianist  for  the  great 
pianist.  He  was  no  longer  reverential,  as 
with  Beethoven,  not  doing  homage  but  tak- 
ing part,  sharing  almost  in  a  creation, 
comet-like,  of  stars  in  the  sky.  Nothing  in 
the  bravura  disconcerted  or  even  displeased 
him,  no  lack  of  coherence  or  obviousness  in 
contrasts  disturbed  him;  what  was  loud, 
boisterous,  explosive,  he  tossed  about  as  in 
a  colossal  game,  he  bathed  luxuriously  in 
what  was  luscious  in  the  melodies,  giving 
them  almost  more  than  their  real  worth  by 
the  delighted  skill  with  which  he  set  them 
singing.  A  more  astonishing,  a  more  con- 
vincing, a  more  overwhelming  tour  de  force 
could  hardly  be  achieved  on  the  piano:  could 
an  eruption  of  Vesuvius  be  more  spectacu- 
larly magnificent? 

Liszt's  music  for  the  piano  was  written 

for  a  pianist  who  could  do  anything  that  has 

ever  been  done  with  the  instrument,  and  the 

result  is  not  so  wholly  satisfactory  as  in  the 

264 


Paderewski 

case  of  Chopin,  who,  with  a  smaller  tech- 
nique, knew  more  of  the  secret  of  music. 
Chopin  never  dazzles,  Liszt  blinds.  It  is  a 
question  if  he  ever  did  full  justice  to  his 
own  genius,  which  was  partly  that  of  an 
innovator,  and  people  are  only  now  begin- 
ning to  do  justice  to  what  was  original  as 
well  as  fine  in  his  work.  How  many  ideas 
Wagner  caught  from  him,  in  his  shameless 
transfiguring  triumphant  way!  The  mel- 
ody of  the  Flower-Maidens,  for  instance,  in 
"Parsifal,"  is  borrowed  frankly  from  a 
tone-poem  of  Liszt  in  which  it  is  no  more 
than  a  thin,  rocking  melody,  without  any 
of  the  mysterious  fascination  that  Wagner 
put  into  it.  But  in  writing  for  the  piano 
Liszt  certainly  remembered  that  it  was  he, 
and  not  some  unknown  person,  who  was  to 
play  these  hard  and  showy  rhapsodies,  in 
which  there  are  no  depths,  though  there  are 
splendours.  That  is  why  Liszt  is  the  test 
rather  of  the  virtuoso  than  of  the  inter- 
preter, why,  therefore,  it  was  so  infinitely 
more  important  that  Paderewski  should 
have  played  the  Beethoven  sonata  as  imper- 

265 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

sonally  as  he  did  than  that  he  should  have 
played  the  Liszt  sonata  with  so  much  per- 
sonal abandonment.  Between  those  limits 
there  seems  to  be  contained  the  whole  art 
of  the  pianist,  and  Paderewski  has  attained 
both  limits. 

After  his  concert  was  over,  Paderewski 
gave  seven  encores,  in  the  midst  of  an  en- 
thusiasm which  recurs  whenever  and  wher- 
ever he  gives  a  concert.  What  is  the  pecu- 
liar quality  in  this  artist  which  acts  alwaj^s 
with  the  same  intoxicating  effect?  Is  it 
anything  quite  normal  in  his  fingers,  or  is 
it,  in  the  image  of  a  brilliant  and  fantastic 
writer  on  music  in  America,  Mr.  James 
Huneker,  a  soul  like  the  soul  of  Belus,  "  the 
Raphael  of  the  piano,"  which,  "suspended 
above  him,  like  a  "coat  of  many  colors," 
mesmerises  the  audience,  while  he  sits  mo- 
tionless, not  touching  the  notes? 

Is  Paderewski  after  all  a  Belus?  Is  it 
his  many  coloured  soul  that  "  magnetises  our 
poor  vertebrae,"  in  Verlaine's  phrase,  and 
not  the  mere  skill  of  his  fingers?  Art,  it 
has  been  said,  is  contagious,  and  to  compel 
266 


Paderewski 

universal  sympathy  is  to  succeed  in  the  last 
requirements  of  an  art.  Of  what  differ- 
ence is  it  whether,  like  Keats,  he  perpetu- 
ates his  personal  magnetism  in  a  stanza,  or, 
like  Paderewski,  sheds  it,  like  a  perfume, 
for  that  passing  moment  which  is  all  the 
eternity  ever  given  to  the  creator  of  beau- 
tiful sounds? 


267 


A  REFLECTION  AT  A  DOL- 
METSCH  CONCERT 

THE  interpreter  of  ancient  music,  Arnold 
Dolmetsch,  is  one  of  those  rare  magicians 
who  are  able  to  make  roses  blossom  in  mid- 
winter. While  music  has  been  modernising 
itself  until  the  piano  becomes  an  orchestra, 
and  Berlioz  requires  four  orchestras  to  ob- 
tain a  pianissimo,  this  strange  man  of  genius 
has  quietly  gone  back  a  few  centuries  and 
discovered  for  himself  an  exquisite  lost 
world,  which  was  disappearing  like  a  fresco 
peeling  off  a  wall.  He  has  burrowed  in 
libraries  and  found  unknown  manuscripts 
like  a  savant,  he  has  worked  at  misunder- 
stood notations  and  found  out  a  way  of  read- 
ing them  like  a  cryptogrammatist,  he  has 
first  found  out  how  to  restore  and  then  how 
to  make  over  again  harpsichord,,  and  vir- 
ginals, and  clavichord,  and  all  those  instru- 
ments which  had  become  silent  curiosities  in 
museums. 

268 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert 

It  is  only  beginning  to  be  realised,  even 
by  musical  people,  that  the  clavecin  music 
of,  for  instance,  B^ch,  loses  at  least  half  its 
charm,  almost  its  identity,  when  played  on 
the  modern  grand  piano;  that  the  exquisite 
music  of  Rameau  and  Couperin,  the  brilliant 
and  beautiful  music  of  Scarlatti,  is  almost 
inaudible  on  everything  but  the  harpsichord 
and  the  viols;  and  that  there  exists,  far 
earlier  than  these  writers,  a  mass  of  English 
and  Italian  music  of  extreme  beauty, 
which  has  never  been  spoiled  on  the  piano 
because  it  has  never  been  played  on  it.  To 
any  one  who  has  once  touched  a  spinet, 
harpsichord,  or  clavichord,  the  piano  must 
always  remain  a  somewhat  inadequate  in- 
strument; lacking  in  the  precision,  the  pene- 
trating charm,  the  infinite  definite  reasons 
for  existence  of  those  instruments  of  wires 
and  jacks  and  quills  which  its  metallic  rum- 
ble has  been  supposed  so  entirely  to  have 
superseded.  As  for  the  clavichord,  to  have 
once  touched  it,  feeling  the  softness  with 
which  one's  fingers  make  their  own  music, 
like  wind  among  the  reeds,  is  to  have  lost 
269 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

something  of  one's  relish  even  for  the  music 
of  the  violin,  which  is  also  a  windy  music, 
but  the  music  of  wind  blowing  sharply 
among  the  trees.  It  is  on  such  instruments 
that  Mr.  Dolmetsch  plays  to  us;  and  he 
plays  to  us  also  on  the  lute,  the  theorbo,  the 
viola  da  gamba,  the  viola  d'  amore,  and  I 
know  not  how  many  varieties  of  those 
stringed  instruments  which  are  most  familiar 
to  most  of  us  from  the  early  Italian  pic- 
tures in  which  whimsical  little  angels  with 
crossed  legs  hold  them  to  their  chins. 

Mr.  Dolmetsch  is,  I  suppose,  the  only  liv- 
ing man  who  can  read  lute-music  and  play 
on  the  lute,  an  instrument  of  extraordinary 
beauty,  which  was  once  as  common  in  Eng- 
land as  the  guitar  still  is  in  Spain.  And, 
having  made  with  his  own  hands  the  ma- 
terials of  the  music  which  he  has  recovered 
from  oblivion,  he  has  taught  himself  and 
he  has  taught  others  to  play  this  music  on 
these  instruments  and  to  sing  it  to  their  ac- 
companiment. In  a  music  room,  which  is 
really  the  living  room  of  a  house,  with  viols 
hanging  on  the  walls,  a  chamber-organ  in 

270 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert 

one  corner,  a  harpsichord  in  another,  a  clavi- 
chord laid  across  the  arms  of  a  chair,  this 
music  seems  to  carry  one  out  of  the  world, 
and  shut  one  in  upon  a  house  of  dreams, 
full  of  intimate  and  ghostly  voices.  It  is 
a  house  of  peace,  where  music  is  still  that 
refreshment  which  it  was  before  it  took 
fever,  and  became  accomplice  and  not  min- 
ister to  the  nerves,  and  brought  the  clamour 
of  the  world  into  its  seclusion. 

Go  from  a  concert  at  Dolmetsch's  to  a 
Tschaikowsky  concert  at  the  Queen's  Hall. 
Tschaikowsky  is  a  debauch,  not  so  much 
passionate  as  feverish.  The  rushing  of  his 
violins,  like  the  rushing  of  an  army  of  large 
winged  birds;  the  thud,  snap,  and  tingle  of 
his  strange  orchestra;  the  riotous  image  of 
Russian  peasants  leaping  and  hopping  in 
their  country  dances,  which  his  dance  meas- 
ures call  up  before  one ;  those  sweet  solid  har- 
monies in  which  (if  I  may  quote  the  voluptu- 
ous phrase  of  a  woman)  one  sets  one's  teeth 
as  into  nougat;  all  this  is  like  a  very  material 
kind  of  pleasure,  in  which  the  senses  for  a 
moment  forget  the  soul.  For  a  moment 
271 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

only,  for  is  it  not  the  soul,  a  kind  of  dis- 
contented crying  out  against  pleasure  and 
pain,  which  comes  back  distressingly  into 
this  after  all  pathetic  music?  All  modern 
music  is  pathetic;  discontent  (so  much  ideal- 
ism as  that!)  has  come  into  all  modern  music, 
that  it  may  be  sharpened  and  disturbed 
enough  to  fix  our  attention.  And  Tschai- 
kowsky  speaks  straight  to  the  nerves,  with 
that  touch  of  unmanliness  which  is  another 
characteristic  of  modern  art.  There  is  a 
vehement  and  mighty  sorrow  in  the  Passion 
Music  of  Bach,  by  the  side  of  which  the 
grief  of  Tschaikowsky  is  like  the  whimper- 
ing of  a  child.  He  is  unconscious  of  reti- 
cence, unconscious  of  self-control.  He  is 
unhappy,  and  he  weeps  floods  of  tears,  beats 
his  breast,  curses  the  daylight;  he  sees  only 
the  misery  of  the  moment,  and  he  sees  the 
misery  of  the  moment  as  a  thing  endless  and 
overwhelming.  The  child  who  has  broken 
his  toy  can  realise  nothing  in  the  future  but 
a  passionate  regret  for  the  toy. 

In  Tschaikowsky  there  is  none  of  the 
quieting  of  thought.     The  only  healing  for 
272 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert 

our  nerves  lies  in  abstract  thought,  and  he 
can  never  get  far  enough  from  his  nerves 
to  look  calmly  at  his  own  discontent.  All 
those  wild,  broken  rhythms,  rushing  this 
way  and  that,  are  letting  out  his  secret  all 
the  time :  "  I  am  unhappy,  and  I  know  not 
why  I  am  unhappy ;  I  want,  but  I  know  not 
what  I  want."  In  the  most  passionate  and 
the  most  questioning  music  of  Wagner  there 
is  always  air;  Tschaikowsky  is  suffocating. 
It  is  himself  that  he  pities  so  much,  and  not 
himself  because  he  shares  in  the  general  sor- 
row of  the  world.  To  Tristan  and  Isolde 
the  whole  universe  is  an  exultant  and  mar- 
tyred sharer  in  their  love;  they  know  only 
the  absolute.  Even  suffering  does  not  bring 
nobility  to  Tschaikowsky. 

To  pass  from  Wagner  to  Tschaikowsky, 
from  "  Parsifal "  to  the  Pathetic  Symphony, 
is  like  passing  from  a  church  in  which 
priests  are  offering  mass  to  a  hut  in  which 
peasants  are  quarrelling,  dancing,  and  mak- 
ing love.  Tschaikowsky  has  both  force  and 
sincerity,  but  it  is  the  force  and  sincerity 
of  a  ferocious  child.  He  takes  the  orchestra 
273 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

in  both  hands,  tears  it  to  pieces,  catches  up 
a  fragment  of  it  here,  a  fragment  of  it  there, 
masters  it  like  an  enemy;  he  makes  it  do 
what  he  wants.  But  he  uses  his  fist  where 
Wagner  touches  with  the  tips  of  his  fingers; 
he  shows  ill-breeding  after  the  manners  of 
the  supreme  gentleman.  Wagner  can  use 
the  whole  strength  of  the  orchestra,  and  not 
make  a  noise:  he  never  ends  on  a  bang.  But 
Tschaikowsky  loves  noise  for  its  own  sake; 
he  likes  to  pound  the  drum,  and  to  hear  the 
violins  running  up  and  down  scales  like 
acrobats.  Wagner  takes  his  rhythms  from 
the  sea,  as  in  "Tristan,"  from  fire,  as  in 
parts  of  the  "  Ring,"  from  light,  as  in  "  Par- 
sifal." But  Tschaikowsky  deforms  the 
rhythms  of  nature  with  the  caprices  of  half- 
civilised  impulses.  He  puts  the  frog-like 
dancing  of  the  Russian  peasant  into  his 
tunes;  he  cries  and  roars  like  a  child  in  a 
rage.  He  gives  himself  to  you  just  as  he 
is ;  he  is  immensely  conscious  of  himself  and 
of  his  need  to  take  you  into  his  confidence. 
In  your  delight  at  finding  any  one  so  alive, 
you  are  inclined  to  welcome  him  without  re- 

274 


A    'Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert 

serve,  and  to  forget  that  a  man  of  genius  is 
not  necessarily  a  great  artist,  and  that,  if  he 
is  not  a  great  artist,  he  is  not  a  satisfactory 
man  of  genius. 

I  contrast  him  with  Wagner  because  it 
seems  to  me  that  Wagner,  alone  among 
quite  modern  musicians,  and  though  indeedf 
he  appeals  to  our  nerves  more  forcibly  than 
any  of  them,  has  that  breadth  and  universal- 
ity by  which  emotion  ceases  to  be  merely 
personal  and  becomes  elemental.  To  the 
musicians  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  music  was  an  art  which  had  to  be 
carefully  guarded  from  the  too  disturbing 
presence  of  emotion;  emotion  is  there  al- 
ways, whenever  the  music  is  fine  music;  but 
the  music  is  something  much  more  than  a 
means  for  the  expression  of  emotion.  It  is 
a  pattern,  its  beauty  lies  in  its  obedience  to 
a  law,  it  is  music  made  for  music's  sake,  with 
what  might  be  called  a  more  exclusive  devo- 
tion to  art  than  that  of  our  modern  mu- 
sician. This  music  aims  at  the  creation 
of  beauty  in  sound;  it  conceives  of  beau- 
tiful sound  as  a  thing  which  cannot  exist 

273  r 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

outside  order  and  measure;  it  has  not 
yet  come  to  look  upon  transgression  as  an 
essential  part  of  liberty.  It  does  not  even 
desire  liberty,  but  is  content  with  loving 
obedience.  It  can  express  emotion,  but  it 
will  never  express  an  emotion  carried  to  that 
excess  at  which  the  modern  idea  of  emotion 
begins.  Thus,  for  all  its  suggestions  of 
pain,  grief,  melancholy,  it  will  remain,  for 
us  at  least,  happy  music,  voices  of  a  house 
of  peace.  Is  there,  in  the  future  of  music, 
after  it  has  expressed  for  us  all  our  emotions, 
and  we  are  tired  of  our  emotions,  and  weary 
enough  to  be  content  with  a  little  rest,  any 
likelihood  of  a  return  to  this  happy  music, 
into  which  beauty  shall  come  without  the 
selfishness  of  desire? 


276 


THE  DRAMATISATION  OF  SONG 

ALL  art  is  a  compromise,  in  which  the  choice 
of  what  is  to  be  foregone  must  be  left  some- 
what to  the  discretion  of  nature.  When  the 
sculptor  foregoes  colour,  when  the  painter 
foregoes  relief,  when  the  poet  foregoes  the 
music  which  soars  beyond  words  and  the 
musician  that  precise  meaning  which  lies  in 
words  alone,  he  follows  a  kind  of  necessity 
in  things,  and  the  compromise  seems  to  be 
ready-made  for  him.  But  there  will  always 
be  those  who  are  discontented  with  no  mat- 
ter what  fixed  limits,  who  dream,  like  Wag- 
ner, of  a  possible,  or,  like  Mallarme,  of  an 
impossible,  fusion  of  the  arts.  These  would 
invent  for  themselves  a  compromise  which 
has  not  yet  come  into  the  world,  a  gain  with- 
out loss,  a  re-adjustment  in  which  the  scales 
shall  bear  so  much  additional  weight  without 
trembling.  But  nature  is  not  always  obedi- 
ent to  this  too  autocratic  command, 
277 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

Take  the  art  of  the  voice.  In  its  essence, 
the  art  of  the  voice  is  the  same  in  the  night- 
ingale and  in  Melba.  The  same  note  is  pro- 
duced in  the  same  way;  the  expression  given 
to  that  note,  the  syllable  which  that  note  ren- 
ders, are  quite  different  things.  Song  does 
not  in  itself  require  words  in  order  to  realise 
even  the  utmost  of  its  capacities.  The  voice 
is  an  instrument  like  the  violin,  and  no  more 
in  need  of  words  for  its  expression  than  the 
violin.  Perhaps  the  ideal  of  singing  would 
be  attained  when  a  marvellous  voice,  which 
had  absorbed  into  itself  all  that  tempera- 
ment and  training  had  to  give  it,  sang  in- 
articulate music,  like  a  violin  which  could 
play  itself.  There  is  nothing  which  such  an 
instrument  could  not  express,  nothing  which 
exists  as  pure  music;  and,  in  this  way,  we 
should  have  the  art  of  the  voice,  with  the 
least  possible  compromise. 

The  compromise  is  already  far  on  its  way 
when  words  begin  to  come  into  the  song. 
Here  are  two  arts  helping  one  another; 
something  is  gained,  but  how  much  is  lost? 
Undoubtedly  the  words  lose,  and  does  not 

278 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song 

the  voice  lose  something  also,  in  its  direct- 
ness of  appeal?  Add  acting  to  voice  and 
words,  and  you  get  the  ultimate  compromise, 
opera,  in  which  other  arts  as  well  have  their 
share  and  in  which  Wagner  would  have  us 
see  the  supreme  form  of  art.  Again  some- 
thing is  lost ;  we  lose  more  and  more,  perhaps 
for  a  greater  gain.  Tristan  sings  lying  on 
his  back,  in  order  to  represent  a  sick  man; 
the  actual  notes  which  he  sings  are  written 
partly  in  order  to  indicate  the  voice  of  a 
sick  man.  For  the  sake  of  what  we  gain  in 
dramatic  and  even  theatrical  expressiveness, 
we  have  lost  a  two-fold  means  of  producing 
vocal  beauty.  Let  us  rejoice  in  the  gain,  by 
all  means;  but  not  without  some  conscious- 
ness of  the  loss,  not  with  too  ready  a  belief 
that  the  final  solution  of  the  problem  has 
been  found. 

An  attempt  at  some  solution  is,  at  this 
moment,  being  made  in  Paris  by  a  singer 
who  is  not  content  to  be  Carmen  or  Char- 
lotte Corday,  but  who  wants  to  invent  a 
method  of  her  own  for  singing  and  acting 
at  the  same  time,  not  as  a  character  in  an 
279 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

opera,  but  as  a  private  interpreter  between 
poetry  and  the  world. 

Imagine  a  woman  who  suggests  at  the 
same  time  Sarah  Bernhardt  and  Mrs. 
Brown-Potter,  without  being  really  like 
either;  she  is  small,  exuberantly  blonde,  her 
head  is  surrounded  by  masses  of  loosely 
twisted  blonde  hair ;  she  has  large  grey  eyes, 
that  can  be  grave,  or  mocking,  or  passionate, 
or  cruel,  or  watchful;  a  large  nose,  an  intent, 
eloquent  mouth.  She  wears  a  trailing  dress 
that  follows  the  lines  of  the  figure  vaguely, 
supple  to  every  movement.  When  she  sings, 
she  has  an  old,  high-backed  chair  in  which 
she  can  sit,  or  on  which  she  can  lean.  When 
I  heard  her,  there  was  a  mirror  on  the  other 
side  of  the  room,  opposite  to  her;  she  saw  no 
one  else  in  the  room,  once  she  had  surren- 
dered herself  to  the  possession  of  the  song, 
but  she  was  always  conscious  of  that  image 
of  herself  which  came  back  to  her  out  of  the 
mirror:  it  was  herself  watching  herself,  in 
a  kind  of  delight  at  the  beauty  which  she  was 
evoking  out  of  words,  notes,  and  expressive 
movement. 

280 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song 

Her  voice  is  strong  and  rich,  imperfectly 
trained,  but  the  voice  of  a  born  singer;  her 
acting  is  even  more  the  acting  of  a  born 
actress;  but  it  is  the  temperament  of  the 
woman  that  flames  into  her  voice  and  ges- 
tures, and  sets  her  whole  being  violently 
and  delicately  before  you.  She  makes  a 
drama  of  each  song,  and  she  re-creates  that 
drama  over  again,  in  her  rendering  of  the 
intentions  of  the  words  and  of  the  music. 
It  is  as  much  with  her  eyes  and  her  hands, 
as  with  her  voice,  that  she  evokes  the  melody 
of  a  picture;  it  is  a  picture  that  sings,  and 
that  sings  in  all  its  lines.  There  is  some- 
thing in  her  aspect,  what  shall  I  call  it? 
tenacious;  it  is  a  woman  who  is  an  artist 
because  she  is  a  woman,  who  takes  in  energy 
at  all  her  senses  and  gives  out  energy  at  all 
her  senses.  She  sang  some  tragic  songs  of 
Schumann,  some  mysterious  songs  of  Mae- 
terlinck, some  delicate  love-songs  of  Charles 
van  Lerberghe.  As  one  looked  and  listened 
it  was  impossible  to  think  more  of  the  words 
than  of  the  music  or  of  the  music  than  of 
the  words.  One  took  them  simultaneously, 

281 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

as  one  feels  at  once  the  softness  and  the  per- 
fume of  a  flower.  I  understood  why  Mal- 
larme  had  seemed  to  see  in  her  the  realisation 
of  one  of  his  dreams.  Here  was  a  new  art, 
made  up  of  a  new  mixing  of  the  arts,  in  one 
subtly  intoxicating  elixir.  To  Mallarme  it 
was  the  more  exquisite  because  there  was 
in  it  none  of  the  broad  general  appeal  of 
opera,  of  the  gross  recognised  proportions 
of  things. 

This  dramatisation  of  song,  done  by  any 
one  less  subtly,  less  completely,  and  less  sin- 
cerely an  artist,  would  lead  us,  I  am  afraid, 
into  something  more  disastrous  than  even 
the  official  concert,  with  its  rigid  persons  in 
evening  dress  holding  sheets  of  music  in 
their  tremulous  hands,  and  singing  the  notes 
set  down  for  them  to  the  best  of  their  vocal 
ability.  Madame  Georgette  Leblanc  is  an 
exceptional  artist,  and  she  has  made  an  art 
after  her  own  likeness,  which  exists  because 
it  is  the  expression  of  herself,  of  a  strong 
nature  always  in  vibration.  What  she  feels 
as  a  woman  she  can  render  as  an  artist;  she 
is  at  once  instinctive  and  deliberate,  delib- 

282 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song 

erate  because  it  is  her  natural  instinct,  the 
natural  instinct  of  a  woman  who  is  essen- 
tially a  woman,  to  be  so.  I  imagine  her  al- 
ways singing  in  front  of  a  mirror,  always 
recognising  her  own  shadow  there,  and  the 
more  absolutely  abandoned  to  what  the  song 
is  saying  through  her  because  of  that  unin- 
terrupted communion  with  herself. 


283 


THE    MEININGEN    ORCHESTRA 

OTHER  orchestras  give  performances,  read- 
ings, approximations ;  the  Meiningen  orches- 
tra gives  an  interpretation,  that  is,  the  thing 
itself.  When  this  orchestra  plays  a  piece 
of  music  every  note  lives,  and  not,  as  with 
most  orchestras,  every  particularly  signifi- 
cant note.  Brahms  is  sometimes  dull,  but  he 
is  never  dull  when  these  people  play  him; 
Schubert  is  sometimes  tame,  but  not  when 
they  play  him.  What  they  do  is  precisely 
to  put  vitality  into  even  those  parts  of  a  com- 
position in  which  it  is  scarcely  present,  or 
scarcely  realisable ;  and  that  is  a  much  more 
difficult  thing,  and  really  a  more  important 
thing,  for  the  proper  appreciation  of  music, 
than  the  heightening  of  what  is  already  fine, 
and  obviously  fine  in  itself.  And  this  par- 
ticular quality  of  interpretation  has  its  value 
too  as  criticism.  For,  while  it  gives  the  ut- 
most value  to  what  is  implicitly  there,  there 
at  least  in  embryo,  it  cannot  create  out  of 

284* 


The    Meiningen    Orchestra 

nothing;  it  cannot  make  insincere  work  sin- 
cere, or  fill  empty  work  with  meaning  which 
never  could  have  belonged  to  it.  Brahms, 
at  his  moments  of  least  vitality,  comes  into 
a  new  vigour  of  life;  but  Strauss,  played  by 
these  sincere,  precise,  thoughtful  musicians 
shows,  as  he  never  could  show  otherwise,  the 
distance  at  which  his  lively  spectre  stands 
from  life.  When  I  heard  the  "  Don  Juan," 
which  I  had  heard  twice  before,  and  liked 
less  the  second  time  than  the  first,  I  realised 
finally  the  whole  strain,  pretence,  and  empti- 
ness of  the  thing.  Played  with  this  earnest 
attention  to  the  meaning  of  every  note,  it 
was  like  a  trivial  drama  when  Duse  acts 
it;  it  went  to  pieces  through  being  taken  at 
its  own  word.  It  was  as  if  a  threadbare 
piece  of  stuff  were  held  up  to  the  full  sun- 
light ;  you  saw  every  stitch  that  was  wanting. 
The  "Don  Juan"  was  followed  by  the 
Entr'acte  and  Ballet  music  from  "Rosa- 
munde,"  and  here  the  same  sunlight  was  no 
longer  criticism,  but  rather  an  illumination. 
I  have  never  heard  any  music  more  beauti- 
fully played.  I  could  only  think  of  the 

285 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

piano  playing  of  Pachmann.  The  faint, 
delicate  music  just  came  into  existence, 
breathed  a  little,  and  was  gone.  Here  for 
once  was  an  orchestra  which  could  literally 
be  overheard.  The  overture  to  the  "  Meister- 
singer  "  followed,  and  here,  for  the  first  time, 
I  got,  quite  flawless  and  uncontradictory, 
the  two  impressions  which  that  piece  presents 
to  one  simultaneously.  I  heard  the  unim- 
peded march  forward,  and  I  distinguished 
at  the  same  time  every  delicate  impediment 
thronging  the  way.  Some  renderings  give 
you  a  sense  of  solidity  and  straightforward 
movement;  others  of  the  elaborate  and  vari- 
ous life  which  informs  this  so  solid  structure. 
Here  one  got  the  complete  thing,  completely 
rendered. 

I  could  not  say  the  same  of  the  rendering 
of  the  overture  to  "Tristan."  Here  the 
notes,  all  that  was  so  to  speak  merely  musi- 
cal in  the  music,  were  given  their  just  ex- 
pression; but  the  something  more,  the  vast 
heave  and  throb  of  the  music,  was  not  there. 
It  was  "  classical "  rendering  of  what  is  cer- 
tainly not  "classical"  music.  Hear  that 

286 


The    Meiningen    Orchestra 

overture  as  Richter  gives  it,  and  you  will 
realise  just  where  the  Meiningen  orchestra 
is  lacking.  It  has  the  kind  of  energy  which 
is  required  to  render  Beethoven's  multitudi- 
nous energy,  or  the  energy  which  can  be 
heavy  and  cloudy  in  Brahms,  or  like  over- 
powering light  in  Bach,  or,  in  Wagner  him- 
self, an  energy  which  works  within  known 
limits,  as  in  the  overture  to  the  "Meister- 
singer."  But  that  wholly  new,  and  somewhat 
feverish,  overwhelming  quality  which  we  find 
in  the  music  of  "  Tristan  "  meets  with  some- 
thing less  than  the  due  response.  It  is  a 
quality  which  people  used  to  say  was  not 
musical  at  all,  a  quality  which  does  not  ap- 
peal certainly  to  the  musical  sense  alone:  for 
the  rendering  of  that  we  must  go  to  Richter. 
Otherwise,  in  that  third  concert  it  would  be 
difficult  to  say  whether  Schumann,  Brahms, 
Mozart,  or  Beethoven  was  the  better  ren- 
dered. Perhaps  one  might  choose  Mozart 
for  pure  pleasure.  It  was  the  "  Serenade  " 
for  wind  instruments,  and  it  seemed,  played 
thus  perfectly,  the  most  delightful  music 
in  the  world.  The  music  of  Mozart  is,  no 
287 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

doubt,  the  most  beautiful  music  in  the 
world.  When  I  heard  the  serenade  I 
thought  of  Coventry  Patmore's  epithet,  ac- 
tually used,  I  think,  about  Mozart:  "glitter- 
ing peace."  Schumann,  Brahms,  Wagner, 
and  Beethoven  all  seemed  for  the  moment 
to  lose  a  little  of  their  light  under  this  pure 
and  tranquil  and  unwavering  "glitter."  I 
hope  I  shall  never  hear  the  "  Serenade " 
again,  for  I  shall  never  hear  it  played  as 
these  particular  players  played  it. 

The  Meiningen  orchestra  is  famous  for 
its  wind,  and  when,  at  the  first  concert,  I 
heard  Beethoven's  Rondino  for  wind  instru- 
ments, it  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  hearing 
brass  for  the  first  time  as  I  had  imagined 
brass  ought  to  sound.  Here  was,  not  so 
much  a  new  thing  which  one  had  never 
thought  possible,  as  that  precise  thing 
which  one's  ears  had  expected,  and  waited 
for,  and  never  heard.  One  quite  miraculous 
thing  these  wind  players  certainly  did,  in 
common,  however,  with  the  whole  orchestra. 
And  that  was  to  give  an  effect  of  distance, 
as  if  the  sound  came  actually  from  beyond 

288 


The    Meiningen    Orchestra 

the  walls.  I  noticed  it  first  in  the  overture 
to  "  Leonore,"  the  first  piece  which  they 
played;  an  unparalleled  effect  and  one  of 
surprising  beauty. 

Another  matter  for  which  the  Meiningen 
orchestra  is  famous  is  its  interpretation  of 
the  works  of  Brahms.  At  each  concert  some 
fine  music  of  Brahms  was  given  finely,  but 
it  was  not  until  the  fourth  concert  that  I 
realised,  on  hearing  the  third  Symphony, 
everything  of  which  Brahms  was  capable. 
It  may  be  that  a  more  profound  acquaint- 
ance with  his  music  would  lead  me  to  add 
other  things  to  this  thing  as  the  finest  music 
which  he  ever  wrote ;  but  the  third  Symphony 
certainly  revealed  to  me,  not  altogether  a 
new,  but  a  complete  Brahms.  It  had  all  his 
intellect  and  something  more;  thought  had 
taken  fire,  and  become  a  kind  of  passion. 


289 


MOZART  IN  THE  MIRABELL- 
GARTEN 

THEY  are  giving  a  cycle  of  Mozart  operas 
at  Munich,  at  the  Hof -Theater,  to  follow 
the  Wagner  operas  at  the  Prinz-Regenten- 
Theatre;  and  I  stayed,  on  my  way  to  Salz- 
burg, to  hear  "Die  Zauberflote."  It  was 
perfectly  given,  with  a  small,  choice  orchestra 
under  Herr  Zumpe,  and  with  every  part  ex- 
cept the  tenor's  admirably  sung  and  acted. 
Herr  Julius  Zarest,  from  Hanover,  was 
particularly  good  as  Papageno;  the  Eva  of 
"  Die  Meistersinger  "  made  an  equally  good 
Pamina.  And  it  was  staged  under  Herr 
von  Possart's  direction,  as  suitably  and  as 
successfully,  in  its  different  way,  as  the 
Wagner  opera  had  been.  The  sombre 
Egyptian  scenes  of  this  odd  story,  with  its 
menagerie  and  its  pantomime  transforma- 
tion, were  turned  into  a  thrilling  spectacle, 
and  by  means  of  nothing  but  a  little  can- 
vas and  paint  and  limelight.  It  could  have 
290 


Mozart  in  the  Mirabell-Garten 

cost  very  little,  compared  with  an  English 
Shakespeare  revival,  let  us  say;  but  how  in- 
finitely more  spectacular,  in  the  good  sense, 
it  was!  Every  effect  was  significant,  per- 
fectly in  its  place,  doing  just  what  it  had  to 
do,  and  without  thrusting  itself  forward 
for  separate  admiration.  German  art  of 
to-day  is  all  decorative,  and  it  is  at  its  best 
when  it  is  applied  to  the  scenery  of  the  stage. 
Its  fault,  in  serious  painting,  is  that  it  is 
too  theatrical,  it  is  too  anxious  to  be  full 
of  too  many  qualities  besides  the  qualities 
of  good  painting.  It  is  too  emphatic,  it  is 
meant  for  artificial  light.  If  Franz  Stuck 
would  paint  for  the  stage,  instead  of  using 
his  vigorous  brush  to  paint  nature  without 
distinction  and  nightmares  without  imagina- 
tion on  easel-canvases,  he  would  do,  perhaps 
rather  better,  just  what  these  scene-painters 
do,  with  so  much  skill  and  taste.  They  have 
the  sense  of  effective  decoration;  and  Ger- 
man art,  at  present,  is  almost  wholly  limited 
to  that  sense. 

I  listened,  with  the  full  consent  of  my 
eyes,  to  the  lovely  music,  which  played  round 
291 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

the  story  like  light  transfiguring  a  mas- 
querade; and  now,  by  a  lucky  chance,  I  can 
brood  over  it  here  in  Salzburg,  where  Mo- 
zart was  born,  where  he  lived,  where  the 
house  in  which  he  wrote  the  opera  is  to  be 
seen,  a  little  garden-house  brought  over 
from  Vienna  and  set  down  where  it  should 
always  have  been,  high  up  among  the  pine- 
woods  of  the  Capuzinerberg.  I  find  myself 
wondering  how  much  Mozart  took  to  him- 
self, how  much  went  to  his  making,  in  this 
exquisite  place,  set  in  a  hollow  of  great  hills, 
from  which,  if  you  look  down  upon  it,  it  has 
the  air  of  a  little  toy  town  out  of  a  Noah's 
Ark,  set  square  in  a  clean,  trim,  perfectly  flat 
map  of  meadows,  with  its  flat  roofs,  packed 
close  together  on  each  side  of  a  long,  wind- 
ing river,  which  trails  across  the  whole 
breadth  of  the  plain.  From  the  midst  of 
the  town  you  look  up  everywhere  at  heights ; 
rocks  covered  with  pine-trees,  beyond  them 
hills  hooded  with  white  clouds,  great  soft 
walls  of  darkness,  on  which  the  mist  is  like 
the  bloom  of  a  plum;  and,  right  above  you, 
the  castle,  on  its  steep  rock  swathed  in  trees, 
292 


Mozart  in  the  Mir  obeli-Garten 

with  its  grey  walls  and  turrets,  like  the 
castle  which  one  has  imagined  for  all  the 
knights  of  all  the  romances.  All  this,  no 
doubt,  entered  into  the  soul  of  Mozart,  and 
had  its  meaning  for  him;  but  where  I  seem 
actually  to  see  him,  where  I  can  fancy  him 
walking  most  often,  and  hearing  more 
sounds  than  elsewhere  come  to  him  through 
his  eyes  and  his  senses,  is  the  Mirabell-Gar- 
ten,  which  lies  behind  the  palace  built  by  an 
Archbishop  of  Salzburg  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  which  is  laid  out  in  the  con- 
ventional French  fashion,  with  a  harmony 
that  I  find  in  few  other  gardens.  I  have 
never  walked  in  a  garden  which  seemed  to 
keep  itself  so  reticently  within  its  own 
severe  and  gracious  limits.  The  trees  them- 
selves seem  to  grow  naturally  into  the  pat- 
tern of  this  garden,  with  its  formal  alleys, 
in  which  the  birds  fly  in  and  out  of  the  trel- 
lised  roofs,  its  square-cut  bushes,  its  low 
stone  balustrades,  its  tall  urns  out  of  which 
droop  trails  of  pink  and  green,  its  round 
flower-beds,  each  of  a  single  colour,  set  at 
regular  intervals  on  the  grass,  its  tiny  f  oun- 
293 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

tain  dripping  faintly  into  a  green  and  brown 
pool;  the  long,  sad  lines  of  the  Archbishop's 
Palace,  off  which  the  brown  paint  is  peeling; 
the  whole  sad  charm,  dainty  melancholy, 
formal  beauty,  and  autumnal  air  of  it.  It 
was  in  the  Mirabell-Garten  that  I  seemed 
nearest  to  Mozart. 

The  music  of  Mozart,  as  one  hears  it  in 
"Die  Zauberflote,"  is  music  without  desire, 
music  content  with  beauty,  and  to  be  itself. 
It  has  the  firm  outlines  of  Diirer  or  of  Bot- 
ticelli, with  the  same  constraint  within  a 
fixed  form,  if  one  compares  it  with  the  Ti- 
tian-like freedom  and  splendour  of  Wag- 
ner. In  hearing  Mozart  I  saw  Botticelli's 
"Spring";  in  hearing  Wagner  I  had 
seen  the  Titian  "Scourging  of  Christ." 
Mozart  has  what  Coventry  Patmore  called 
"a  glittering  peace":  to  Patmore  that  qual- 
ity distinguished  supreme  art,  and,  indeed, 
the  art  of  Mozart  is,  in  its  kind,  supreme.  It 
has  an  adorable  purity  of  form,  and  it  has 
no  need  to  look  outside  those  limits  which 
it  has  found  or  fixed  for  itself.  Mozart 
294 


Mozart  in  the  Mir db ell-Garten 

cares  little,  as  a  rule,  for  what  he  has  to  ex- 
press ;  but  he  cares  infinitely  for  the  way  in 
which  he  expresses  everything,  and,  through 
the  mere  emotional  power  of  the  notes  them- 
selves, he  conveys  to  us  all  that  he  cares  to 
convey:  awe,  for  instance,  in  those  solemn 
scenes  of  the  priests  of  Isis.  He  is  a  magi- 
cian, who  plays  with  his  magic,  and  can  be 
gay,  out  of  mere  pleasant  idleness,  fooling 
with  Papagenus  as  Shakespeare  fools  in 
"Twelfth-Night."  "Die  Zauberflote"  is 
really  a  very  fine  kind  of  pantomime,  to 
which  music  lends  itself  in  the  spirit  of  the 
thing,  yet  without  condescending  to  be  gro- 
tesque. The  duet  of  Papagenus  and  Papa- 
gena  is  absolutely  comic,  but  it  is  as  lovely 
as  a  duet  of  two  birds,  of  less  flaming 
feather.  As  the  lovers  ascend  through  fires 
and  floods,  only  the  piping  of  the  magic  flute 
is  heard  in  the  orchestra:  imagine  Wagner 
threading  it  into  the  web  of  a  great  orches- 
tral pattern!  For  Mozart  it  was  enough, 
and  for  his  art,  it  was  enough.  He  gives 
you  harmony  which  does  not  need  to  mean 
295 


Plays.,  Acting,  and  Music 

anything  outside  itself,  in  order  to  be  su- 
premely beautiful;  and  he  gives  you  beauty 
with  a  certain  exquisite  formality,  not  caring 
to  go  beyond  the  lines  which  contain  that 
reticent,  sufficient  charm  of  the  Mirabell- 
Garten. 


296 


NOTES    ON    WAGNER    AT    BAY- 
REUTH 

I.      BAYREUTH  AND  MUNICH 

BAYEEUTH  is  Wagner's  creation  in  the 
world  of  action,  as  the  music-dramas 
are  his  creation  in  the  world  of  art;  and 
it  is  a  triumph  not  less  decisive,  in  its 
transposition  of  dream  into  reality.  Re- 
member that  every  artist,  in  every  art,  has 
desired  his  own  Bayreuth,  and  that  only 
Wagner  has  attained  it.  Who  would  not 
rather  remain  at  home,  receiving  the  world, 
than  go  knocking,  humbly  or  arrogantly,  at 
many  doors,  offering  an  entertainment,  per- 
haps unwelcome?  The  artist  must  always 
be  at  cautious  enmity  with  his  public,  always 
somewhat  at  its  mercy,  even  after  he  has 
conquered  its  attention.  The  crowd  never 
really  loves  art,  it  resents  art  as  a  departure 
from  its  level  of  mediocrity;  and  fame 
comes  to  an  artist  only  when  there  is  a  suf- 
297 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ficient  number  of  intelligent  individuals  in 
the  crowd  to  force  their  opinion  upon  the 
resisting  mass  of  the  others,  in  the  form  of 
a  fashion  which  it  is  supposed  to  he  unin- 
telligent not  to  adopt.  Bayreuth  exists  he- 
cause  Wagner  willed  that  it  should  exist, 
and  because  he  succeeded  in  forcing  his  ideas 
upon  a  larger  number  of  people  of  power 
and  action  than  any  other  artist  of  our  time. 
Wagner  always  got  what  he  wanted,  not 
always  when  he  wanted  it.  He  had  a  king 
on  his  side,  he  had  Liszt  on  his  side,  the  one 
musician  of  all  others  who  could  do  most  for 
him;  he  had  the  necessary  enemies,  besides 
the  general  resistance  of  the  crowd;  and  at 
last  he  got  his  theatre,  not  in  time  to  see  the 
full  extent  of  his  own  triumph  in  it,  but 
enough,  I  think,  to  let  him  die  perfectly 
satisfied.  He  had  done  what  he  wanted: 
there  was  the  theatre,  and  there  were  his 
works,  and  the  world  had  learnt  where  to 
come  when  it  was  called. 

And  there  is  now  a  new  Bayreuth,  where, 
almost  as  well  as  at  Bayreuth  itself,  one  can 
see  and  hear  Wagner's  music  as  Wagner 

298 


Notes  on   Wagner 

wished  it  to  be  seen  and  heard.  The  square, 
plain,  grey  and  green  Prinz-Regenten 
Theatre  at  Munich  is  an  improved  copy  of 
the  theatre  at  Bayreuth,  with  exactly  the 
same  ampitheatrical  arrangement  of  seats, 
the  same  invisible  orchestra  and  vast  stage. 
Everything  is  done  as  at  Bayreuth:  there 
are  even  the  three  "f anf  aren  "  at  the  doors, 
with  the  same  punctual  and  irrevocable 
closing  of  the  doors  at  the  beginning  of 
each  act.  As  at  Bayreuth,  the  solemnity  of 
the  whole  thing  makes  one  almost  nervous, 
for  the  first  few  minutes  of  each  act;  but, 
after  that,  how  near  one  is,  in  this  perfectly 
darkened,  perfectly  quiet  theatre,  in  which 
the  music  surges  up  out  of  the  "mystic 
gulf,"  and  the  picture  exists  in  all  the  ec- 
stasy of  a  picture  on  the  other  side  of  it, 
beyond  reality,  how  near  one  is  to  being 
alone,  in  the  passive  state  in  which  the  flesh 
is  able  to  endure  the  great  burdening  and 
uplifting  of  vision.  There  are  thus  now 
two  theatres  in  the  world  in  which  music  and 
drama  can  be  absorbed,  and  not  merely 
guessed  at. 

299 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

II.      THE  LESSON  OF  PARSIFAL 

The  performance  of  "  Parsifal,"  as  I  saw 
it  at  Bayreuth,  seemed  to  me  the  most  really 
satisfying  performance  I  had  ever  seen  in  a 
theatre;  and  I  have  often,  since  then,  tried 
to  realise  for  myself  exactly  what  it  was  that 
one  might  learn  from  that  incarnation  of 
the  ideas,  the  theoretical  ideas,  of  Wagner. 
The  music  itself  has  the  abstract  quality  of 
Coventry  Patmore's  odes.  I  cannot  think  of 
it  except  in  terms  of  sight.  Light  surges  up 
out  of  it,  as  out  of  unformed  depths;  light 
descends  from  it,  as  from  the  sky;  it  breaks 
into  flashes  and  sparkles  of  light,  it  broad- 
ens out  into  a  vast  sea  of  light.  It  is  almost 
metaphysical  music;  pure  ideas  take  visible 
form,  humanise  themselves  in  a  new  kind  of 
ecstasy.  The  ecstasy  has  still  a  certain  fever 
in  it;  these  shafts  of  light  sometimes  pierce 
the  soul  like  a  sword;  it  is  not  peace,  the 
peace  of  Bach,  to  whom  music  can  give  all 
he  wants;  it  is  the  unsatisfied  desire  of  a 
kind  of  flesh  of  the  spirit,  and  music  is  but 
a  voice.  "Parsifal"  is  religious  music,  but 
it  is  the  music  of  a  religion  which  had  never 

300 


Notes  on   Wagner 

before  found  expression.  I  have  found  in 
a  motet  of  Vittoria  one  of  the  motives  of 
"  Parsifal,"  almost  note  for  note,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  Wagner  owed  much  to 
Palestrina  and  his  school.  But  even  the 
sombre  music  of  Vittoria  does  not  plead  and 
implore  like  Wagner's.  The  outcry  comes 
and  goes,  not  only  with  the  suffering  of 
Amfortas,  the  despair  of  Kundry.  This 
abstract  music  has  human  blood  in  it. 

What  Wagner  has  tried  to  do  is  to  unite 
mysticism  and  the  senses,  to  render  mysti- 
cism through  the  senses.  Mr.  Watts-Dun- 
ton  has  pointed  out  that  that  is  what  Ros- 
setti  tried  to  do  in  painting.  That  mysteri- 
ous intensity  of  expression  which  we  see  in 
the  faces  of  Rossetti's  latest  pictures  has 
something  of  the  same  appeal  as  the  in- 
satiable crying-out  of  a  carnal  voice,  some- 
where in  the  depths  of  Wagner's  latest 
music. 

In  "Parsifal,"  more  perhaps  than  any- 
where else  in  his  work,  Wagner  realised 
the  supreme  importance  of  monotony,  the 
effect  that  could  be  gained  by  the  incessant 

301 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

repetition  of  a  few  ideas.  All  that  music 
of  the  closing  scene  of  the  first  act  is  made 
out  of  two  or  three  phrases,  and  it  is  by  the 
finest  kind  of  invention  that  those  two  or 
three  phrases  are  developed,  and  repeated, 
and  woven  together  into  so  splendid  a  tissue. 
And,  in  the  phrases  themselves,  what  sever- 
ity, what  bareness  almost!  It  is  in  their  re- 
turn upon  themselves,  their  weighty  reiter- 
ance,  that  their  force  and  significance  be- 
come revealed;  and  if,  as  Nietzsche  says, 
they  end  by  hypnotising  us,  well,  all  art  is  a 
kind  of  hypnotic  process,  a  cunning  absorp- 
tion of  the  will  of  another. 

"Parsifal"  presents  itself  as  before  all 
things  a  picture.  The  music,  soaring  up 
from  hidden  depths,  and  seeming  to  drop 
from  the  heights,  and  be  reflected  back  from 
shining  distances,  though  it  is,  more  than 
anything  I  have  ever  heard,  like  one  of  the 
great  forces  of  nature,  the  sea  or  the  wind, 
itself  makes  pictures,  abstract  pictures ;  but 
even  the  music,  as  one  watches  the  stage, 
seems  to  subordinate  itself  to  the  visible 
picture  there.  And,  so  perfectly  do  all  the 

302 


Notes  on   Wagner 

arts  flow  into  one,  the  picture  impresses  one 
chiefly  by  its  rhythm,  the  harmonies  of  its 
convention.  The  lesson  of  "Parsifal"  is 
the  lesson  that,  in  art,  rhythm  is  everything. 
Every  moment  in  the  acting  of  this  drama 
makes  a  picture,  and  every  movement  is 
slow,  deliberate,  as  if  automatic.  No  actor 
makes  a  gesture,  which  has  not  been  regu- 
lated for  him;  there  is  none  of  that  unin- 
telligent haphazard  known  as  being  "nat- 
ural " ;  these  people  move  like  music,  or  with 
that  sense  of  motion  which  it  is  the  business 
of  painting  to  arrest.  Gesture  being  a  part 
of  a  picture,  how  should  it  but  be  settled  as 
definitely,  for  that  pictorial  effect  which  all 
action  on  the  stage  is  (more  or  less  uncon- 
sciously) striving  after,  as  if  it  were  the 
time  of  a  song,  or  the  stage  direction: 
"  Cross  stage  to  right "?  Also,  every  gesture 
is  slow;  even  despair  having  its  artistic 
limits,  its  reticence.  It  is  difficult  to  express 
the  delight  with  which  one  sees,  for  the  first 
time,  people  really  motionless  on  the  stage. 
After  all,  action,  as  it  has  been  said,  is  only 
a  way  of  spoiling  something.  The  aim  of 

303 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

the  modern  stage,  of  all  drama,  since  the 
drama  of  the  Greeks,  is  to  give  a  vast  im- 
pression of  bustle,  of  people  who,  like  most 
people  in  real  life,  are  in  a  hurry  about 
things;  and  our  actors,  when  they  are  not 
making  irrelevant  speeches,  are  engaged  in 
frantically  trying  to  make  us  see  that  they 
are  feeling  acute  emotion,  by  I  know  not 
what  restlessness,  contortion,  and  ineffectual 
excitement.  If  it  were  once  realised  how 
infinitely  more  important  are  the  lines  in  the 
picture  than  these  staccato  extravagances 
which  do  but  aim  at  tearing  it  out  of  its 
frame,  breaking  violently  through  it,  we 
should  have  learnt  a  little,  at  least,  of  what 
the  art  of  the  stage  should  be,  of  what 
Wagner  has  shown  us  that  it  can  be. 

Distance  from  the  accidents  of  real  life, 
atmosphere,  the  space  for  a  new,  fairer 
world  to  form  itself,  being  of  the  essence  of 
Wagner's  representation,  it  is  worth  notic- 
ing how  adroitly  he  throws  back  this  world 
of  his,  farther  and  farther  into  the  back- 
ground, by  a  thousand  tricks  of  lighting, 
the  actual  distance  of  the  stage  from  the 
so* 


Notes  on   Wagner 

proscenium,  and  by  such  calculated  effects, 
as  that  long  scene  of  the  Graal,  with  its  pro- 
longed movement  and  ritual,  through  the 
whole  of  which  Parsifal  stands  motionless, 
watching  it  all.  How  that  solitary  figure 
at  the  side,  merely  looking  on,  though,  un- 
known to  himself,  he  is  the  centre  of  the  ac- 
tion, also  gives  one  the  sense  of  remoteness, 
which  it  was  Wagner's  desire  to  produce, 
throwing  back  the  action  into  a  reflected 
distance,  as  we  watch  someone  on  the  stage 
who  is  watching  it! 

The  beauty  of  this  particular  kind  of  act- 
ing and  staging  is  of  course  the  beauty  of 
convention.  The  scenery,  for  instance, 
with  what  an  enchanting  leisure  it  merely 
walks  along  before  one's  eyes,  when  a 
change  is  wanted!  Convention,  here  as  in 
all  plastic  art,  is  founded  on  natural  truth 
very  closely  studied.  The  rose  is  first 
learned,  in  every  wrinkle  of  its  petals,  petal 
by  petal,  before  that  reality  is  elaborately 
departed  from,  in  order  that  a  new,  abstract 
beauty  may  be  formed  out  of  those  outlines, 
all  but  those  outlines  being  left  out. 
305 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

And  "Parsifal,"  which  is  thus  solemnly 
represented  before  us,  has  in  it,  in  its  very 
essence,  that  hieratic  character  which  it  is 
the  effort  of  supreme  art  to  attain.  At 
times  one  is  reminded  of  the  most  beautiful 
drama  in  the  world,  the  Indian  drama 
"Sakuntala":  in  that  litter  of  leaves, 
brought  in  so  touchingly  for  the  swan's  bur- 
ial, in  the  old  hermit  watering  his  flowers. 
There  is  something  of  the  same  universal 
tenderness,  the  same  religious  linking  to- 
gether of  all  the  world,  in  some  vague 
enough,  but  very  beautiful,  Pantheism.  I 
think  it  is  beside  the  question  to  discuss  how 
far  Wagner's  intentions  were  technically 
religious :  how  far  Parsifal  himself  is  either 
Christ  or  Buddha,  and  how  far  Kundry  is 
a  new  Magdalen.  Wagner's  mind  was  the 
mind  to  which  all  legend  is  sacred,  every 
symbol  of  divine  things  to  be  held  in  rever- 
ence; but  symbol,  with  him,  was  after  all  a 
means  to  an  end,  and  could  never  have  been 
accepted  as  really  an  end  in  itself.  I  should 
say  that  in  "  Parsifal "  he  is  profoundly  re- 
ligious, but  not  because  he  intended,  or  did 


Notes  on   Wagner 

not  intend,  to  shadow  the  Christian  myster- 
ies. His  music,  his  acting,  are  devout,  be- 
cause the  music  has  a  disembodied  ecstasy, 
and  the  acting  a  noble  rhythm,  which  can 
but  produce  in  us  something  of  the  solem- 
nity of  sensation  produced  by  the  service  of 
the  Mass,  and  are  in  themselves  a  kind  of 
religious  ceremonial. 

III.      THE  ART  OF  WAGNER 

In  saying,  as  we  may  truly  say,  that 
Wagner  made  music  pictorial,  it  should  be 
remembered  that  there  is  nothing  new  in  the 
aim,  only  in  the  continuity  of  its  success. 
Haydn,  in  his  "Creation,"  evoked  land- 
scapes, giving  them  precision  by  an  almost 
mechanical  imitation  of  cuckoo  and  night- 
ingale. Trees  had  rustled  and  water  flowed 
in  the  music  of  every  composer.  But  with 
Wagner  it  may  be  said  that  the  landscape 
of  his  music  moves  before  our  eyes  as  clearly 
as  the  moving  scenery  with  which  he  does 
but  accentuate  it;  and  it  is  always  there, 
not  a  decor,  but  a  world,  the  natural  world 
in  the  midst  of  which  his  people  of  the 
307 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

drama  live  their  passionate  life,  and  a  world 
in  sympathy  with  all  their  passion.  And  in 
his  audible  representation  of  natural  sounds 
and  natural  sights  he  does,  consummately, 
what  others  have  only  tried,  more  or  less 
well,  to  do.  When,  in  the  past  at  least,  the 
critics  objected  to  the  realism  of  his  imita- 
tive effects,  they  forgot  that  all  other  com- 
posers, at  one  time  or  another,  had  tried  to 
be  just  as  imitative,  but  had  not  succeeded 
so  well  in  their  imitations.  Wagner,  in  his 
painting,  is  the  Turner  of  music.  He  brings 
us  nature,  heroically  exalted,  full  of  fiery 
splendour,  but  nature  as  if  caught  in  a  mir- 
ror, not  arranged,  subdued,  composed,  for 
the  frame  of  a  picture.  He  is  afraid  of  no 
realism,  however  mean,  because  he  has  confi- 
dence in  nature  as  it  is,  apprehended  with 
all  the  clairvoyance  of  emotion. 

Between  the  abyss  of  the  music,  out  of 
which  the  world  rises  up  with  all  its  voices, 
and  the  rocks  and  clouds,  in  which  the  scen- 
ery carries  us  onward  to  the  last  horizon  of 
the  world,  gods  and  men  act  out  the  brief 
human  tragedy,  as  if  on  a  narrow  island  in 

308 


Notes  on  Wagner 

tHe  midst  of  a  great  sea.  A  few  steps  this 
way  or  that  will  plunge  them  into  darkness ; 
the  darkness  awaits  them,  however  they 
succeed  or  fail,  whether  they  live  nobly  or 
ignobly,  in  the  interval;  but  the  interval  ab- 
sorbs them,  as  if  it  were  to  be  eternity,  and 
we  see  them  rejoicing  and  suffering  with 
an  abandonment  to  the  moment  which  in- 
tensifies the  pathos  of  what  we  know  is  fu- 
tile. Love,  in  Wagner,  is  so  ecstatic  and  so 
terrible,  because  it  must  compass  all  its  an- 
guish and  delight  into  an  immortal  moment, 
before  which  there  is  only  a  great  darkness, 
and  only  a  great  darkness  afterwards.  Sor- 
row is  so  lofty  arid  so  consoling  because  it  is 
no  less  conscious  of  its  passing  hour. 

And  meanwhile  action  is  not  everything, 
as  it  is  for  other  makers  of  drama;  is  but 
one  among  many  modes  of  the  expression 
of  life.  Those  long  narratives,  which  some 
find  so  tedious,  so  undramatic,  are  part  of 
Wagner's  protest  against  the  frequently 
false  emphasis  of  action.  In  Wagner  an- 
ticipation and  memory  are  seen. to  be  often 
equally  intense  with  the  instant  of  realisa- 

309 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

tion.  Siegfried  is  living  with  at  least  as 
powerful  and  significant  a  life  when  he  lies 
under  the  trees  listening  to  the  song  of  the 
birds  as  when  he  is  killing  the  dragon.  And 
it  is  for  this  that  the  "motives,"  which  are 
after  all  only  the  materialising  of  memory, 
were  created  by  Wagner.  These  motives, 
by  which  the  true  action  of  the  drama  ex- 
presses itself,  are  a  symbol  of  the  inner  life, 
of  its  preponderance  over  outward  event, 
and,  in  their  guidance  of  the  music,  their 
indication  of  the  real  current  of  interest, 
have  a  spiritualising  effect  upon  both  music 
and  action,  instead  of,  as  was  once  thought, 
materialising  both. 

Wagner's  aim  at  expressing  the  soul  of 
things  is  still  further  helped  by  his  system 
of  continuous,  unresolved  melody.  The 
melody  which  circumscribes  itself  like  Giot- 
to's O  is  almost  as  tangible  a  thing  as  a 
statue;  it  has  almost  contour.  But  this  mel- 
ody afloat  in  the  air,  flying  like  a  bird,  with- 
out alighting  for  more  than  a  moment's 
swaying  poise,  as  the  notes  flit  from  strings 
to  voice,  and  from  voice  to  wood  and  wind, 

310 


Notes  on   Wagner 

is  more  than  a  mere  heightening  of  speech: 
it  partakes  of  the  nature  of  thought,  but  it 
is  more  than  thought;  it  is  the  whole  ex- 
pression of  the  subconscious  life,  saying 
more  of  himself  than  any  person  of  the 
drama  has  ever  found  in  his  own  soul. 

It  is  here  that  Wagner  unites  with  the 
greatest  dramatists,  and  distinguishes  him- 
self from  the  contemporary  heresy  of  Ib- 
sen, whose  only  too  probable  people  speak  a 
language  exactly  on  the  level  of  their  desks 
and  their  shop-counters.  Except  in  the 
"  Meistersinger,"  all  Wagner's  personages 
are  heroic,  and  for  the  most  part  those  su- 
preme sublimations  of  humanity,  the  people 
of  legend,  Tannhauser,  Tristan,  Siegfried, 
Parsifal,  have  at  once  all  that  is  in  humanity 
and  more  than  is  in  humanity.  Their  place 
in  a  national  legend  permits  them,  without 
disturbing  our  critical  sense  of  the  proba- 
bility of  things,  a  superhuman  passion;  for 
they  are  ideals,  this  of  chivalry,  that  of  love, 
this  of  the  bravery,  that  of  the  purity,  of 
youth.  Yet  Wagner  employs  infinite  de- 
vices to  give  them  more  and  more  of  veri- 

311 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

similitude;  modulating  song,  for  instance, 
into  a  kind  of  chant  which  we  can  almost 
take  for  actual  speech.  It  is  thus  the  more 
interesting  to  note  the  point  to  which  real-, 
ism  conducts  him,  the  limit  at  which  it  stops, 
his  conception  of  a  spiritual  reality  which 
begins  where  realism  leaves  off. 

And,  in  his  treatment  of  scenery  also,  we 
have  to  observe  the  admirable  dexterity  of 
his  compromises.  The  supernatural  is  ac- 
cepted frankly  with  almost  the  childish 
popular  belief  in  a  dragon  rolling  a  loathly 
bulk  painfully,  and  breathing  smoke.  But 
note  that  the  dragon,  when  it  is  thrown  back 
into  the  pit,  falls  without  sound;  note  that 
the  combats  are  without  the  ghastly  and 
foolish  modern  tricks  of  blood  and  disfigure- 
ment ;  note  how  the  crowds  pose  as  in  a  good 
picture,  with  slow  gestures,  and  without  in- 
trusive individual  pantomime.  As  I  have 
said  in  speaking  of  "  Parsifal,"  there  is  one 
rhythm  throughout;  music,  action,  speech, 
all  obey  it.  When  Briinnhilde  awakens 
after  her  long  sleep,  the  music  is  an  im- 
mense thanksgiving  for  light,  and  all  her 

312 


Notes  on  Wagner 

being  finds  expression  in  a  great  embracing 
movement  towards  the  delight  of  day.  Sieg- 
fried stands  silent  for  I  know  not  what 
space  of  time;  and  it  is  in  silence  always, 
with  a  wave-like  or  flame-like  music  surg- 
ing about  them,  crying  out  of  the  depths 
for  them,  that  all  the  lovers  in  Wagner  love 
at  first  sight.  Tristan,  when  he  has  drunk 
the  potion;  Siegmund,  when  Sieglinde  gives 
him  to  drink;  Siegfried,  when  Briinnhilde 
awakens  to  the  world  and  to  him:  it  is  al- 
ways in  the  silence  of  rapture  that  love  is 
given  and  returned.  And  the  gesture,  sub- 
dued into  a  gravity  almost  sorrowful  (as  if 
love  and  the  thought  of  death  came  always 
together,  the  thought  of  the  only  ending  of 
a  mortal  eternity) ,  renders  the  inmost  mean- 
ing of  the  music  as  no  Italian  gesture,  which 
is  the  vehemence  of  first  thoughts  and  the 
excitement  of  the  senses,  could  ever  render 
it.  That  slow  rhythm,  which  in  Wagner  is 
like  the  rhythm  of  the  world  flowing  on- 
wards from  its  first  breathing  out  of  chaos, 
as  we  hear  it  in  the  opening  notes  of  the 
"Ring,"  seems  to  broaden  outwards  like 

313 


Plays,  Acting,  and  Music 

ripples  on  an  infinite  sea,  throughout  the 
whole  work  of  Wagner. 

And  now  turn  from  this  elemental  music, 
in  which  the  sense  of  all  human  things  is 
expressed  with  the  dignity  of  the  elements 
themselves,  to  all  other  operatic  music,  in 
which,  however  noble  the  music  as  music 
(think  of  Gluck,  of  Mozart,  of  Bee- 
thoven!), it  is  for  the  most  part  fettered  to 
a  little  accidental  comedy  or  tragedy,  in 
which  two  lovers  are  jealous,  or  someone  is 
wrongly  imprisoned,  or  a  libertine  seduces 
a  few  women.  Here  music  is  like  a  god 
speaking  the  language  of  savages,  and  low- 
ering his  supreme  intellect  to  the  level  of 
their  speech.  The  melodious  voice  remains, 
but  the  divine  meaning  has  gone  out  of  the 
words.  Only  in  Wagner  does  God  speak 
to  men  in  his  own  language. 


CONCLUSION 


A  PARADOX  ON  ART 

Is  it  not  part  of  the  pedantry  of  letters  to 
limit  the  word  art,  a  little  narrowly,  to  cer- 
tain manifestations  of  the  artistic  spirit,  or, 
at  all  events,  to  set  up  a  comparative  esti- 
mate of  the  values  of  the  several  arts,  a  little 
unnecessarily?  Literature,  painting,  sculp- 
ture, music,  these  we  admit  as  art,  and  the 
persons  who  work  in  them  as  artists;  but 
dancing,  for  instance,  in  which  the  per- 
former is  at  once  creator  and  interpreter, 
and  those  methods  of  interpretation,  such  as 
the  playing  of  musical  instruments,  or  the 
conducting  of  an  orchestra,  or  acting,  have 
we  scrupulously  considered  the  degree  to 
which  these  also  are  art,  and  their  executants, 
in  a  strict  sense,  artists? 

If  we  may  be  allowed  to  look  upon  art  as 
something  essentially  independent  of  its  ma- 
terial, however  dependent  upon  its  own  ma- 

317 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

terial  each  art  may  be,  in  a  secondary  sense, 
it  will  scarcely  be  logical  to  contend  that  the 
motionless  and  permanent  creation  of  the 
sculptor  in  marble  is,  as  art,  more  perfect 
than  the  same  sculptor's  modelling  in  snow, 
which,  motionless  one  moment,  melts  the 
next,  or  than  the  dancer's  harmonious  suc- 
cession of  movements  which  we  have  not 
even  time  to  realise  individually  before  one 
is  succeeded  by  another,  and  the  whole  has 
vanished  from  before  our  eyes.  Art  is  the 
creation  of  beauty  in  form,  visible  or  audible, 
and  the  artist  is  the  creator  of  beauty  in 
visible  or  audible  form.  But  beauty  is  in- 
finitely various,  and  as  truly  beauty  in  the 
voice  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  or  the  silence  of 
Duse  as  in  a  face  painted  by  Leonardo  or 
a  poem  written  by  Blake.  A  dance,  per- 
formed faultlessly  and  by  a  dancer  of  tem- 
perament, is  as  beautiful,  in  its  own  way, 
as  a  performance  on  the  violin  by  Ysaye 
or  the  effect  of  an  orchestra  conducted  by 
Richter.  In  each  case  the  beauty  is  differ- 
ent, but,  once  we  have  really  attained  beauty, 
there  can  be  no  question  of  superiority. 

318 


A   Paradox   on  Art 

Beauty  is  always  equally  beautiful;  the  de- 
grees exist  only  when  we  have  not  yet  at- 
tained beauty. 

And  thus  the  old  prejudice  against  the 
artist  to  whom  interpretation  in  his  own  spe- 
cial form  of  creation  is  really  based  upon  a 
misunderstanding.  Take  the  art  of  music. 
Bach  writes  a  composition  for  the  violin: 
that  composition  exists,  in  the  abstract,  the 
moment  it  is  written  down  upon  paper,  but, 
even  to  those  trained  musicians  who  are  able 
to  read  it  at  sight,  it  exists  in  a  state  at  best 
but  half  alive;  to  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
it  is  silent.  Ysaye  plays  it  on  his  violin,  and 
the  thing  begins  to  breathe,  has  found  a 
voice  perhaps  more  exquisite  than  the  sound 
which  Bach  heard  in  his  brain  when  he  wrote 
down  the  notes.  Take  the  instrument  out 
of  Ysaye's  hands,  and  put  it  into  the  hands 
of  the  first  violin  in  the  orchestra  behind 
him;  every  note  will  be  the  same,  the  same 
general  scheme  of  expression  may  be  fol- 
lowed, but  the  thing  that  we  shall  hear  will 
be  another  thing,  just  as  much  Bach,  per- 
haps, but,  because  Ysaye  is  wanting,  not 
319 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

the  work  of  art,  the  creation,  to  which  we 
have  just  listened. 

That  such  art  should  be  fragile,  evanes- 
cent, leaving  only  a  memory  which  can  never 
be  realised  again,  is  as  pathetic  and  as  nat- 
ural as  that  a  beautiful  woman  should  die 
young.  To  the  actor,  the  dancer,  the  same 
fate  is  reserved.  They  work  for  the  instant, 
and  for  the  memory  of  the  living,  with  a 
supremely  prodigal  magnanimity.  Old  peo- 
ple tell  us  that  they  have  seen  Desclee, 
Taglioni;  soon  no  one  will  be  old  enough  to 
remember  those  great  artists.  Then,  if  their 
renown  becomes  a  matter  of  charity,  of 
credulity,  if  you  will,  it  will  be  but  equal 
with  the  renown  of  all  those  poets  and  paint- 
ers who  are  only  names  to  us,  or  whose  mas- 
terpieces have  perished. 

Beauty  is  infinitely  various,  always  equally 
beautiful,  and  can  never  be  repeated.  Gau- 
tier,  in  a  famous  poem,  has  wisely  praised 
the  artist  who  works  in  durable  material: 

Oui,  1'ceuvre  sort  plus  gelle 
D'une  forme  au  travail 
Rebelle, 

Vers,  marbre,  onyx,  email. 
320 


A   Paradox   on  Art 
No,  not  more  beautiful;  only  more  lasting. 

Tout  passe.     L'art  robuste 
Seul  a  1'eternite. 

Le  buste 
Survit  a  la  cite. 

Well,  after  all,  is  there  not,  to  one  who 
regards  it  curiously,  a  certain  selfishness, 
even,  in  this  desire  to  perpetuate  oneself  or 
the  work  of  one's  hands;  as  the  most  aus- 
tere saints  have  found  selfishness  at  the  root 
of  the  soul's  too  conscious,  or  too  exclusive, 
longing  after  eternal  life?  To  have  created 
beauty  for  an  instant  is  to  have  achieved  an 
equal  result  in  art  with  one  who  has  created 
beauty  which  will  last  many  thousands  of 
years.  Art  is  concerned  only  with  accom- 
plishment, not  with  duration.  The  rest  is 
a  question  partly  of  vanity,  partly  of  busi- 
ness. An  artist  to  whom  posterity  means 
anything  very  definite,  and  to  whom  the  ad- 
miration of  those  who  will  live  after  him  can 
seem  to  promise  much  warmth  in  the  grave, 
may  indeed  refuse  to  waste  his  time,  as  it 
seems  to  him,  over  temporary  successes.  Or 
he  may  shrink  from  the  continuing  ardour  of 

321 


Plays,  Acting,   and  Music 

one  to  whom  art  has  to  be  made  over  again 
with  the  same  energy,  the  same  sureness, 
every  time  that  he  acts  on  the  stage  or  draws 
music  out  of  his  instrument.  One  may  in- 
deed be  listless  enough  to  prefer  to  have 
finished  one's  work,  and  to  be  able  to  point 
to  it,  as  it  stands  on  its  pedestal,  or  comes 
to  meet  all  the  world,  with  the  democratic 
freedom  of  the  book.  All  that  is  a  natural 
feeling  in  the  artist,  but  it  has  nothing  to 
do  with  art.  Art  has  to  do  only  with  the 
creation  of  beauty,  whether  it  be  in  words, 
or  sounds,  or  colour,  or  outline,  or  rhythmi- 
cal movement;  and  the  man  who  writes  music 
is  no  more  truly  an  artist  than  the  man  who 
plays  that  music,  the  poet  who  composes 
rhythms  in  words  no  more  truly  an  artist 
than  the  dancer  who  composes  rhythms  with 
the  body,  and  the  one  is  no  more  to  be  pre- 
ferred to  the  other,  than  the  painter  is  to 
be  preferred  to  the  sculptor,  or  the  musician 
to  the  poet,  in  those  forms  of  art  which  we 
have  agreed  to  recognise  as  of  equal  value. 


322 


BY  THE  SAME  WRITER 

Poems  (Collected  Edition  in  two  volumes), 

1902. 
An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Browning, 

1886, 1906. 

Aubrey  Beardsley,  1898,  1905. 
The    Symbolist   Movement   in    Literature, 

1899,'  1908. 
Cities,  1903. 

Studies  in  Prose  and  Verse,  1904. 
A  Book  of  Twenty  Songs,  1905. 
Spiritual  Adventures,  1905. 
The  Fool  of  the  World,  and  Other  Poems, 

1906. 

Studies  in  Seven  Arts,  1906. 
William  Blake,  1907. 
Cities  of  Italy,  1907. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL     FINEToF     25     CFIMTC 


OCT  22  ,935 

)     |/     FEB  16  1937 
MAR    12  1938 


'NTER-LI0R, 

051$L 


YC.  17813 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


